The size of the Exchange database will never shrink.
All that happens is the database gets white space and that space is used first before the physical size of the database reduced.
Therefore if you are moving data to reduce the size of that database, you should move all of the mailboxes out of the database, drop the database and recreate it.
You can run a process called offline defrag on a database without moving the data, but this is a slow process (1-4gb per hour), requires complete downtime of the server and is not risk free. With multiple database support on Exchange 2007 as far as I am
concerned doing that process isn't worth the downtime, when I can just move data around with no impact or data risk.
I wrote this some time ago, and the behaviour of the database hasn't changed, other than it is in one file now, rather than two.
http://blog.sembee.co.uk/post/Exchange-Database-Size-and-Limits.aspx
Simon.
Simon Butler, Exchange MVP
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