Case Study: Data Restore

All contacts missing from both Outlook and Blackberry

Client phoned up Support tree with Urgent support help required.
Client had setup a new Blackberry with the desktop manager, in the process they had setup the synchronization to one way sync, Blackberry to overwrite Outlook.
As phone was new the Sync had no contacts on and so the update deleted all contacts from Outlook.
To resolve a fix the following options were considered
 

1. Check backup of phone
2. Any offline outlook file not synced since deletion
3. Restore from Exchange backup mailbox level
4. Restore complete exchange database and recover contacts

The first 3 options were all tried but we were unable to recover the lost contacts.
 

1. Backup of phone did not have any data. Hence restore of file was not possible

2. There was no other system that synced with Exchange and had offline folder so a restore to PST file was not possible
 

3. The client had opted not to purchase a 'brick level' capable back up plan which meant a simple file level restore was also not possible

Solution

To resolve this the exchange database from the day before was restored, the current database was moved to another location and the restore database was mounted, a new profile was created on a workstation to connect to the restored database and the contacts that had been deleted were restored and then exported to a PST file.
The current database was then restored to its original location and the system remounted, the original outlook profile was then loaded on the workstation and the contacts imported back to the exchange server from the PST file.
 

Blackberry was then setup to sync with Outlook with the restored contacts.