First off, note that I am not doing this recovery because of any actual problem, I'm just testing it. I'm running Exchange 2010 on Server 2008 R2, and using Windows Server Backup to a remote file share for the backups. I have to assume I'm doing something wrong because all of the documentation I've found hasn't helped me.
I back up the 2 separate volumes that I store database files and log files on. I use Windows Server Backup to restore a given EDB file and it's corresponding log files to an alternate location. Normally I would assume I can then create a new recovery database, specifying the location of these restored files, and I could then mount it to try to restore specific mail. However, it always gives me errors because it's in a "Dirty Shutdown" state. Running eseutil /mh shows me this state. From what I've found online, it seems as though this state should only appear if there is a genuine corruption. The backups are supposed to be Exchange-aware, so I would imagine this should not be the state the database is in after recovery. I've tried to go through the whole repair process suggested when there's corruption, but this always destroys all the data I need.
Am I doing something wrong with the backup, or something with the restore? Should the database be in this "Dirty Shutdown" state after restoring?
Best Answer
Please take a look at THIS article, at the bottom it states that a DB backed up and restored to an alternate location using Windows Backup will be flagged as dirty.