Storage Group on MS Exchange Server comprises of two components: Mailbox Store and Public folder Store. The numbers of these versions vary depending upon the version of Exchange Server. While the mailbox folder keeps a record of all users as well as system mailboxes, the public folder store that contains emails, forums, posts etc, basically the content of a public folder.
For an organization, single mailbox store and public folder store is sufficient but as the size of database grows, the database can be divided into small parts so that ease in accessibility is attainable and it helps in maintaining backups to some extent. When an Exchange edition is installed in the system, Storage Groups get created by default.
Therefore, for an Exchange administrator, Storage Group (popularly known as Information Store) is very important. Due to any reason if the information store on Exchange is deviated from its normal functioning, it leads to Exchange Information Store Service termination inaccessibility of database stored in priv. edb, priv. stm, pub. edb and pub. edb files.
Let us consider a scenario to explain the consequences of Storage Group corruption:
Say, you make an attempt to mount the database on Server but failed. In addition an error message is received that states: "Unable to Mount the Mailbox Store with error c104173c The Information Store is Busy". This Error message probably emerges on screen when any of the database file, priv.edb or pub.edb gets corrupted.
First of all, check out if the database is consistent or not. For this, run Eseutil/mh command. Depending upon the results, execute following activities:
Meanwhile, when the aforementioned commands are used, there is a threat to Exchange database. They can result in data loss of Log file emails. Also, these built-in utilities can be used with rare editions of MS Exchange Server. When you get stuck under such troublesome circumstances, use of Exchange Recovery software will help to work around database mounting issues. The powerful scanning algorithms at the back end of the tool guarantees absolute results with original data integrity maintained.