I have an Exchange 2003sp2 Standard which I just started getting consistency errors from during my nightly backups. I tried running eseutil & isinteg to repair during overnight hours, but it was taking too long & I had to cancel & restore the edb file from backup. I calculated how long it would take & estimated 17-24 hours to fully run everything (the mail store is about 70GB). This news wasn't received well by management & they want me to find a solution with minimal downtime if possible. I've been thinking about installing a second (temporary) exchange instance, then migrating all of the mailboxes over to it individually over time, then repairing/recreating what is left of the original mail store, then migrating the mailboxes back.
Is the corruption/consistency errors going to migrate over with the mailboxes? Am I risking making the errors worse by moving the mailboxes (creating a lot of activity on the original mail store)? Am I missing anything in my plan that may cause problems along the way? Is there any easier & quicker way to fix the Exchange database with minimal downtime?