What is the difference between a .STM file and a .EDB file?
On the surface, storage groups and databases seem to be the most fundamental Exchange Server components. You use storage groups as containers for mailbox and public folder stores. You create mailbox and public folder stores within storage groups, and each storage group can have multiple data stores.
An Exchange database is associated with each data store. You use Exchange databases to ease the administration burden that comes with managing large installations. For example, instead of having a single 100-GB database for the entire organization, you can create five 20-GB databases that you can manage more easily.
When you install a new Exchange server in an organization, two data stores are created automatically: a default mailbox store and default public folder store. Two database files are associated with the default mailbox store:
Pub1.edb: A rich-text file database file containing message headers, message text, and standard attachments.
Pub1.stm: A streaming internet content file containing audio, video, and other media that are formatted as streams of MIME data.
In other words, all Exchange databases have .edb and .stm files associated with them. When you create a mailbox or public folder store, you can specify the names for these files. By default, the .edb and .stm file names are the same as the name of the data store. For example, if you create a mailbox store called Administration and don't change the default .edb and .stm file names, these files are called Administration.edb and Administration.stm, respectively.
An Exchange database is associated with each data store. You use Exchange databases to ease the administration burden that comes with managing large installations. For example, instead of having a single 100-GB database for the entire organization, you can create five 20-GB databases that you can manage more easily.
When you install a new Exchange server in an organization, two data stores are created automatically: a default mailbox store and default public folder store. Two database files are associated with the default mailbox store:
- Priv1.edb: A rich-text database file containing message headers, message text, and standard attachments.
- Priv1.stm: A streaming internet content file containing audio, video and other media that are formatted as streams of Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) data.
Pub1.edb: A rich-text file database file containing message headers, message text, and standard attachments.
Pub1.stm: A streaming internet content file containing audio, video, and other media that are formatted as streams of MIME data.
In other words, all Exchange databases have .edb and .stm files associated with them. When you create a mailbox or public folder store, you can specify the names for these files. By default, the .edb and .stm file names are the same as the name of the data store. For example, if you create a mailbox store called Administration and don't change the default .edb and .stm file names, these files are called Administration.edb and Administration.stm, respectively.
