Exchange Server Information Store databases support transaction logging i.e. before committing any data to the database, it is first written to transaction logs. If your database is ever forced to perform recovery, these transaction logs replay and restore the database to a working state. When an Exchange Server Information Store database corrupts, it marks an event indicating the root cause of the issue. You can deduce the problem and thus, take corrective measures to solve it. In cases, when no backup is available to replace the damaged database and ESEUTIL utility also fails to repair, you need to use an effective Microsoft Exchange Recovery utility that could repair and restore the damaged database.

For an instance, you might receive the below event ID in Application log of Event Viewer:

Date: date Source: ESE Time: time Category: Logging/Recovery Type: Error Event ID: 454 User: N/A Computer: Servername Description: Information Store (2184) Database recovery/restore failed with unexpected error -501

Cause

Event 454 generally indicates database corruption that occurs while restore or recovery operation. Error -501 corresponds to hexadecimal value 0xFFFFFE0B. It represents JET_errLogFileCorrupt error and shows that the recovery operation has failed because of log file corruption.

Solution

You need to solve the given issue by following these steps:

Check if all database files are consistent. If they are, you can move all corrupted log files that are contained in Exchsrvr\Mdbdata folder and then try to mount the Information Store If applying the above step doesn't solve the issue as databases are not consistent, you need to restore the corrupted databases from backup. In case, no suitable backup is present, you can execute eseutil /p command to repair the damaged databases

If the error stil persists, use a powerful and safe third-party Exchange Recovery Tool to scan and repair the damaged database. Microsoft Exchange Recovery software are non-destructive tools designed with advanced technology to repair the corrupted database. These tools provide you self-explanatory interface and provide advanced set of features. In addition, you can use these products in any case of logical database corruption.

Stellar Phoenix Mailbox Exchange Recovery is a fully-competent Exchange 2003 Recoverytool to systematically repair damaged Exchange databases created with Exchange Server 5.5, 2000 and 2003. It provides safe Exchange Recovery Tool that extracts all user mailboxes by converting them into Outlook usable .pst files. The tool is capable of recovering all email messages, notes, journals, tasks and other objects.