XADM: Slow Full Text Indexing and Query Performance in Exchange 2000

In Exchange 2000, you may see full-text crawls, indexing, and queries slow down or stop unexpectedly.

In versions of Exchange 2000 earlier than Exchange 2000 Service Pack 1 (SP1), if disk space drops under 15 percent of total disk space on the catalog drive, the full text indexing component in Exchange 2000 (MSsearch) performs a master merge continuously, negatively affecting indexing and query performance.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: In Exchange 2000 SP1, MSsearch only performs the master merge if all of the following conditions are true:

�	Less than 15 percent of the catalog drive is free.
�	Less than 300 megabytes (MB) of the catalog drive is free.
�	The shadow indexes are at least 30 MB.
�	The shadow indexes are at least 15 percent of the master index size.

This significantly improves indexing and query performance.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server. This problem was first corrected in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack 1.