BackupExec Serendipity: Exchange Mailbox Restore

A few weeks ago, our Exchange server crashed. I quickly built a
replacement and used ADSIEdit to migrate all users in our domain to
the new server.

After stablizing the situation and making sure that all users had
e-mail services from the new server, I ran a restore on the Exchange
system directories to replace any corrupt files. Afterwards, I
created a new job that restored the private mailbox of one user. I
thought I had configured the job to restore the mailbox onto the old
server that had crashed, and I was going to try to re-attach the
mailbox to a new dummy account that I had created in the domain.

Much to my (pleasant) surprise, as the restoration succeeded, it
copied the mailbox contents into the mailbox store on the new server,
not the old one. I did not configure the job to perform redirection,
but, lo, the happy user informed me this morning that all his old
messages, contacts, tasks, appointments, etc. were back!

It may be that Active Directory was smart enough to move the messages
into the right information store, or it may be related to the fact
that I configured the job to not do a no loss restore and overwrite
the old log files.

Anyway, I'd like to see if anyone can offer a technical explanation of
this serendipity, as I need to reproduce the accident in order to
restore the remainder of the mailboxes from the old server.

Cheers,

Greg Lusk