Exchange data recovery

I'm trying to do something a little bit obscure, if not to other people at least to me.

My current task: Sneak into the (possibly corrupted) data of a Windows 2003 server hard drive, and extract the Exchange data from it, for one or more accounts. I say one or more, because if I succeed, I'll probably have to repeat the feat.

Then I have to hand-pick the data, and import it back into the user's Outlook profile, so that he has access to his old e-mail data, contacts, and so on and so forth.

Things that are _NOT_ included in my options:

-Installing a new box with Windows Server 2003
-Installing Exchange on my desktop from a sane backup to properly export data
-Any other thing implying a proper backup system and/or disaster recovery plan.

Tools I have at my disposal:

-External USB hard drives
-The Windows Server 2003 hard-drive
-A live ubuntu disk
-Time, but it seems I have to not use that alot.

Solution 1:

Assuming the files are intact on the servers hard drive, then Ontracks Power Controls will allow you to extract mailboxes from the exchange .mdb files. They have a demo which will allow you to see if recovery is possible. See here

Edit: Looking at your previous posts, it looks like your boss will learn the hard way why proper backups and proper server hardware RAID are important.

Solution 2:

If the machine boots up and has exchange installed, installing exmerge you can extract a mailbox to a pst on the machine and then copy that pst to a local workstation whose matching inbox in order to upload the mail items for this user.