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On an Exchange server, when a mailbox enabled user or a mailbox is deleted, the mailbox will be moved to a disconnected state and is left in the mail store for a retention period (this is a configuration setting - usually about 30 days). While the mailbox is in a disconnected state, administrators have the option to reconnect to the mailbox and restore the user/mailbox at any time during the retention period. Once the retention period is reached, the mailbox is removed permanently from the mail store.

Exchange administrators need to monitor the disconnected mailboxes on their servers for two reasons. First, by checking what mailboxes are in the disconnected state, administrators can identify if any mailbox or user has been inadvertently deleted. Secondly, by tracking the time for a disconnected mailbox to be purged by the system, administrators can determine when the storage space reserved for the disconnected mailbox will be released.

The DisconnMailBoxTest automatically discovers and monitors the disconnected mailboxes on an Exchange server. This test works only on Exchange 2003 or higher. The measures reported by this test are given below.

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Is_disconnected	Indicates whether the mailbox is disconnected or not	Boolean	When the value is 1, it means that this mailbox is disconnected.
Current_messages	The total number of messages that are in the disconnected mailbox	Number
Mailbox_size	The total size of the disconnected mailbox	MB
Time_to_purge	The time left before a disconnected mailbox is to be removed permanently from the mail store	Hours	The detailed diagnosis of the Time_to_purge measure, if enabled, displays the date and time at which the disconnected mailbox was marked for permanent deletion (the Mailbox_deletion_date) and the date and time at which the mailbox is likely to be permanently removed from the Exchange server (the Mailbox_purge_date). This knowledge enables administrators to configure alerts that are to be generated before a disconnected mailbox is to be removed from the Exchange server, so that they can cross verify whether the deletion is valid.