Exchange Server - I archived and deleted 30,000+ messages and ran a eseutil defrag butmy priv1.edb did not get any smaller?

I am getting Event ID 9688's in my event log saying I am approaching the
18gb limit on my SBS post office.  I really do not want to use the reg
hack to make it bigger.  This will only make things worse for backup
and recovery tasks.  I went on a rampage yesturday and removed 30,000+
messages (archived them actually) which was a good thing.  Our biggest
user had lots of mail from all the way back to 2003.  I have basically
archived everything prior to 2008.

I dismounted the store and ran a eseutil /d per posts that I saw on
the net.  This is supposed to do more than the nightly defrag.  But my
priv1.edb has not gotten any smaller and last night I got another
Event 9688.

What am I doing wrong?  All of the "shrink" posts I have read says doing
this should make the database smaller.

Roveer

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Does this have to do with the deleted mail retention period?  I just
came across a post saying that the user lowered deleted mail retention
to 2 days from 20, forced an online defrag, then ran an offline defrag
and his store went from 16gb to 2gb.  Is this likely my problem?

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quoted text -

The items you deleted will not delete from the database if the deleted
item retention window has not passed.

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So, just for anyone who stumbles across this thread in a similar
situation.  What I ended up doing (which was sucessful), was to
archive lots of email from our mailboxes.  One user is hanging on to
110,000 messages.  Once the archive is finished you need to either
wait a number of days you have set for "deleted mail retention" or if
you are in a hurry like I was, then change deleted mail retention to 0
and then force an online defrag by modifying the maintenance interval
to "custom" and set it for the next 30 minute period after the current
time.  Then watch the event log to see the maintenance actually run.
Can take 15 to 30 minutes to actaully start so you have to be
patient.  I believe you will get among other things a 700 and 701, but
I am pretty sure you will have to wait till you get a 1221 to know that
the maintenance has finished.  Dont' forget to reset your deleted mail
retention period to what it was before you set it to 0.  Also do not
forget to reset your maintenance interval to what it was before you
changed it.   Now you will need to dismount your store and run an
offline defrag in order to actually shrink the database.  Search
around for info on this so you can read some of the caveats like
making sure you have 110% of your store space available for this
operation.  Also, I started the defrag from the utility in the /bin
directory and since I have moved my exchange store to a super fast raid
6 array it was creating the temp files in the directory that I
launched the util from.  Some of the posts guide you through adding
the bin directory to the server path so you can launch it from
anywhere, I just pathed to it using " " quotes to deal with spaces.
This way it created its temp files on my fast array where I wanted it,
probably saved me an hour of time doing that.  Dont' forget to remount
the store once the offline defrag is done.  Oh, defrag command line
is:  eseutil /d priv1.edb (with the bin dir being added to the system
path and the command being executed in the mdbdata directory where the
priv1.edb file exists).

In the end I reduced the store by 4.9gb's and that is just great for
me.  Don't forget to back up the store after you do an offline
defrag.  You cannot play those log files back into the older database
after you have done a defrag, so it is important to take a copy right
away!

Learned a lot about exchange this week.  Now it is time to go back to
my other job.  Homebuilding!

Cheers,

Roveer