In an EDB (Exchange Server Database) file, the transaction log is s history of activities, executed by the Exchange Server to guarantee the ACID properties over hardware failure or system crash. There are mainly helpful in aces of improper system shutdown to rollback the incomplete transaction and to recover the system from inconsistent state. But in some situations, the transaction log itself might get damaged and put your database in an inconsistent or damaged state. These situations cause critical data loss and require EDB Repair to be sorted out.

In order to check the integrity of log files, you can use Eseutil tool with /ml option. But in some cases, the Eseutil utility with /ml option fails in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2000.

In order to test the transaction log file for corruption, you should the below command:

Eseutil /ml Log File Name

If the transaction log file passes the test, you will get below response:

Integrity check passed for log file: Log File Name

If the test fails, you get following message:

“CORRUPTION DETECTED in log file: Log File Name
Operation terminated with error -501 (JET_errLogFileCorrupt, Log file is corrupt)”

The database inconsistency might take place due to torn writes, that require Repair Exchange database to resolve it. The torn write is actually an incomplete physical write operation, which is left in E00.log file after database service stops. The torn write results into checksums on affected transaction in log file to be incorrectly calculated and log is detected as corrupted by Eseutil. To resolve the Torn Write situations, when you apply Eseutil /ml, the following event might be logged into Application Event Log of Exchange Server:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: ESE98
Event Category: Logging/Recovery
Event ID: 465
Date: 12/9/1999
Time: 2:48:48 PM
User: N/A
Computer: Computer_Name
Description: Information Store (2428) Corruption was detected during soft recovery in log file E:\exchsrvr\THIRD\E00123ab.log. The failing checksum record is located at position 8189:328. Data not matching the log-file fill pattern first appeared in sector 8195.

In such cases, you need to repair and restore the damaged database to retrieve data from it. This is best possible with the help of powerful and advanced third party EDB Recovery software. These applications are capable of carrying out in-depth scan of damaged EBD file and retrieve all of its objects. The Repair EDB software are built-with interactive graphical user interface and thus do not demand sound technical skills.

Stellar Phoenix Mailbox Exchange Recovery is an efficient tool to ensure safe and absolute recovery in most of the EDB file corruption situations. It works well with Exchange Server 2003, 2000 and 5.5. This software is compatible with Microsoft Windows 2003, XP and 2000.