Question : Recovery on Exchange db gives I/O error

Hello.

A few days ago my Exchange 2003 Server crashed due to a hardware malfunction. The OS (Win2003 Server) was restored from backup and everything works fine in the OS. I have a backup of the Microsoft Information Store from the evening before the crash. Symantec Backup Exec 11d did the backup with the help of their Exchange Agent.

So, with the OS up and running again I did a restore from the backup server to the mail server, where I chose to "Commit after restore completes" which I believe is equivalent to Microsoft's "This is the last backup set". The restore job completed successfully although it says in the log that the database was corrupt at the time that it was backed up (this is the first indication of this I've seen, the backup jobs have never reported this).

When priv1.edb, priv1.stm and pub1.edb (pub1.stm is missing but I don't care about the public folder, it's the private mailboxes that I need) are back in C:\program files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA where they were before the crash.

In Exchange System Manager I right-click on the Mailbox Store and choose "Mount Store" but I get an error message back saying "Internal Processing Error" and that I should restart Information Store Service and System Manager and check the Event Viewer. Error ID c1041724.

The Event Viewer logs error 619 with the message: Information Store (3816) First Storage Group: Attempted to attach database 'C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb' but it is a database restored from a backup set on which hard recovery was not started or did not complete successfully.

So I opened a DOS window and executed eseutil /cc /t as it said in the help file, to do a hard recovery, but it returns an I/O error in the end. It said Operation terminated with error -939523074 (A disk I/O error occurred.) after 0.391 seconds.

The Event Viewer tells me that ESE Backup logged error 904, with the message  Information Store (3816) Callback function call ErrESECBRestoreComplete ended with error 0xC80003FE A disk I/O error occurred.

I am at a loss for what to do.. I have read up on eseutil but I am unsure of what things to try there, perhaps I need to repair the databases, since Backup Exec claims they are corrupt. If I run eseutil /mh it says that the priv1.edb did a Dirty Shutdown and I dont know how to correct this..

Ran eseutil /g to check integrity but it only gives me The database is not up-to-date. This operation may find that this database is corrupt because data from the log files has yet to be placed in the database. and asks if I want to continue anyway but I said cancel there.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated because this is doing my head in.

Answer : Recovery on Exchange db gives I/O error

If you couldn't repair the database, you could restore the mailboxes. Did you do a mailbox backup as well as the information store? If you are not doing that, you should start. Also, did you use BackupExec, and have the plugin for Exchange? Your backups might not have worked because you were not backing up with the correct software.  I have rebuilt my Exchange server after a  system crash, maybe 3 or 4 times in the last 8 years. Sometimes it took longer than others, but it never didn't work.  
I did tell you to proof out each component by replacing parts with known good parts. Isn't that what you are doing? The step was to use a new server, or use a new database. Now that you know that the new database works, you know what the probloem is. If you are going to stay with the new datbase, well that is sort of a solution, maybe not what you envisioned when you started out, but none the less, a solution. Good luck