Use full and incremental backups

Consider running full backups of mailboxes or public folders on a regular basis. Supplement the full backups with incremental or differential backups to keep backup run time to a minimum.

Continue to back up the Information Store

Do not substitute mailbox backups for backups of the entire Information Store. You cannot perform a complete restore of Exchange Server from a mailbox backup. You can only perform a complete restore of Exchange Server from backups of the Information Store.

Recover deleted items rather than restoring them

Consider using the Exchange System Manager utility to adjust the deletion settings in each Store's properties. Deleted items can be retained for a period of time, allowing them to be recovered rather than restored. See your Microsoft Exchange Server documentation for details.

Exclude unwanted or unnecessary folders from the backup

When you select a mailbox or public folder for backup, by default all folders and subfolders are included. You can exclude specific folders and subfolders.

See Including or excluding files for backup.

For example, to exclude all mail in the Deleted Items folder, type:

\**\Deleted Items\*

To exclude all mail in the Sent Items folder, type:

\**\Sent Items\*

Enable single-instance backup for message attachments

When backing up mailboxes and public folders, you can choose to back up only a single copy of all identical message attachments. When an identical attachment is found, a reference to that attachment is retained. The actual attachment is backed up only once at the end of the backup set.

Enabling single instance backup for message attachment increases backup performance since duplicate attachments are backed up only once.

Do not back up special system mailboxes created by Exchange

Although these special system mailboxes can be backed up, it is not necessary or useful.

There may be others depending on the Exchange server configuration and environment.

Also, when selecting objects from the mailbox tree, all objects are displayed as messages. Some non-message objects can be identified by the subject line. For example, if you create a Calendar event named Appointment1, that name is displayed in the subject line for that object. However, some objects such as Forms and Views do not have a subject line (even though they can be named) and may not be easily identifiable.

Select public folders from only one Exchange server

The same public folders may appear for multiple Exchange servers since public folders can be replicated. Selecting public folders on multiple Exchange servers only increases the time and media required for the backup and does not provide any additional protection.