Exchange BKF Recovery - Tips to Recover Data from Corrupt Exchange BKF Files

A majority of organizations are implementing MS Exchange Server. Exchange administrators may come across a plethora of circumstances that necessitate backing up Exchange Information Stores. There is a big list of scenarios that may render your Exchange data inaccessible at some point in time. The list goes like: disk failure, server failure, losing emails due to hard delete, physical or logical database corruption, data center failure, mailbox deletion, and more. All these scenarios add risks of data loss to your business. You need to understand whether the system is able to recover its services during each one of these failures. The answer to this lies in implementing a proper backup strategy.

Exchange Server stores data using JET database engine. This engine is capable of handling multiple databases that reside in various storage groups. Also, backing up Exchange database files requires you to take them offline, i.e. not serving any user requests. Backup utilities may also perform online backups by using an API to freeze the database and write data to a temporary file. The process allows backing up entire database. In case of offline backups, you may not require backing up log files if you have dismounted your database correctly. If you faced a power outage and the information store crashed, you should backup the entire database directory.

The Windows backup tool 'NTBackup' can be used to backup Exchange databases. The backup file will have '.BKF' extension. However, you may fail to restore data from backups when your Exchange BKF files become corrupt. Typically, Exchange BKF corruption happens due to virus infection, backup interruption, missing catalog files, some corrupt Exchange items when performing online backups, and backup software malfunction. When you perform backups using Window 'NTBackup' utility, you cannot figure out corruption. The tool will not help you realize that you are backing up corrupt Exchange data. In addition, Microsoft does not provide an inbuilt tool to repair corrupt BKF files.

In such circumstances, you require taking help of professional Exchange BKF repair software. A number of advanced utilities are available in the market that help you safely recover data from corrupt BKF files. With the help of these utilities, you can quickly regain access to your mailboxes, public folders, storage groups, and other Exchange items. These tools record all activities in a log file. Further, they support all the latest versions of MS Exchange, including MS Exchange Server 2007 and 2003.