Question : Exchange Offline Defrag Not Freeing Up Space

We have a Microsoft Exchange 2003 Standard server with 2 stores (public and private).  We have tweaked the registry to allow for the 75GB store size, however, our public folder store is at 75GB.  

We routinely run offline defrags to free up the white space on the stores.  And recently we ran a program that removes any duplicate items within the store.  This recent clean up removed almost 8GB of information from the store.  But when I ran the defrag this weekend it didn't reduce the size of the store.

I have confirmed that the folders we have removed data from are smaller in size now (by looking at the Exchange Manager view of the public folders.  

Is there another process that I have to wait for in order to see the reduction in the entire store?

Answer : Exchange Offline Defrag Not Freeing Up Space

You need to set the deleted items retention (it's on the properties of each store).
Items won't be deleted until the items have been removed from the dumpster which happens after the period specified.

If you want to create white space quickly set the deleted items retention to 0 and then set the maintenance schedule to run every 15 minutes.

Restart the Microsoft Exchange System Attendent service and then give it 30 minutes or so.

Look in the event log for event 1221, there may be 2 one for the public and one for the private store, this will tell you how much free space there is.