Solved

Permanently remove data from backup

  • 23 November 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 672 views

Badge +4

I need the ability to permanently delete emails from an Exchange backup.  Beyond removing indexes and making it unavailable for recovery, I need for the data to be completely wiped whether by overwriting the emails in question with zeroes or rewriting the backup image so the data in question is no longer present in the backup file.

According to the docs - https://documentation.commvault.com/11.23/essential/110998_deleting_mailbox_items_folders_or_messages.html and https://documentation.commvault.com/11.23/essential/104288_deleting_mail_messages_in_exchange_mailbox.html

If a message is deleted from mailbox it cannot be recovered.  But it doesn’t explicitly say how that is done and I suspect the data will still be present in the backup file itself.

Is it possible to do what I am looking for?

Thanks

icon

Best answer by JamesA 23 November 2021, 11:20

View original

2 replies

Userlevel 2
Badge +5

Hi @Skarra 

Thank you for your question. 

You are right that for mailbox backup this is “item level” backup so essentially when you delete the message the item is marked as deleted from the index. This makes the item non-restorable as without the index information the data chunks have no reference and cannot be recovered. 

Over time the physical data chunks are deleted from the storage. 

There is no way unfortunately to achieve what you are asking about writing zeros or replacing the data chunks. 

Badge +4

Thank you for the quick response.  Appreciate it.

Reply