How to Fix Error – Usage Error Invalid argument ‘Storage’. Options must be preceded by ‘-‘ or ‘/’?

One of the jobs of an Exchange Server administrator is to monitor the storage. If the Exchange Server goes out of disk space, the business may come to a halt as the users may not be able to send and receive emails or save their data. Also, you may end up with dismounted Exchange databases or corrupt transaction logs. You can delete the data to reduce the database size. But when any data is deleted, the used space is not reclaimed as the Exchange Server makes this space available for new data instead of reducing the database size. This space is known as white space.

You can clear off the white space by using the native tool – ESEUtil. This tool can go through all the databases and reclaim the unused space being cluttered by white space.

eseutil /ms <EDB File path>

Depending on the size of the database, this process may take a considerable amount of time to complete. It could be the reason that the operation may fail with an error (see the below image).

Most of the time, the error occurs if the database is mounted. It will not allow you to execute the command. In such a case, you can dismount the database. Follow these steps:

• Open the Exchange Admin Center (EAC).
• Click on Servers.
• Click on Databases.
• Highlight the database to dismount.
• Click on the More Options button (…).
• Click on Dismount.

Alternatively, you can use the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) to dismount the database. Execute the following PowerShell command.

Dismount-Database "<database name>" -Confirm:$False

When the maintenance process is complete, run the below command to mount it again.

Mount-Database "<database name>" -Confirm:$False

However, when running the ESEUtil command to clear the white space, you may end up with a strange issue and the process may halt with the error Usage Error: Invalid argument ‘Storage’. Options must be preceded by ‘-‘ or ‘/’.

Solutions to Fix the Usage Error: Invalid argument ‘Storage’. Options must be preceded by ‘-‘ or ‘/’ Error

Here are some solutions you can try to fix this error.

1. When you specify the full path of the EDB file, enclose the path with double quotes to ensure that all characters are noted in the command, especially if you have any characters or spaces in the folder names.
2. You must ensure that there is enough space to run the command and that your hard drive is not full. Also, ensure that the database is not mounted.
3. Another option to try to resolve the matter is to restart the Information Store service. It’s important that this is done during a maintenance window as it will stop all users from sending and receiving emails, accessing public folders, and other features of Exchange Server.

To restart the Information Store service, open Services, right-click on Microsoft Exchange Information Store, and then click on Restart.

To Conclude

If the issue is not resolved, there could be corruption in your Exchange Server database, especially if you end up with no disk space. In such cases, the database will not mount and you end up with a database marked as Dirty Shutdown. You can use the ESEUtil with soft recovery to recover the database. If the problem persists, you need to run the hard recovery. However, it is strongly suggested not to perform hard recovery as it purges any data that is deemed corrupted, resulting in data loss.

The best solution, in this case, is to create a new database and export all the mailboxes to the new database. However since the Exchange database would not mount, this is not possible natively. If the database is mounted, you could use the move request command but you will not be able to move any mailbox if the database or items are corrupt. Also, you will not be able to move public folders easily.

In such cases, exchange recovery tool such as Stellar Repair for Exchange can come in handy. Stellar Repair for Exchange can open corrupt EDB files from any Exchange Server version. You can simply select all the mailboxes and export them directly to a live Exchange Server database. You can also granularly export recovered user mailboxes, shared mailboxes, disabled mailboxes, and public folders to PST and other formats, such as MSG, PDF, EML, and HTML. You can also use the application as a migration tool as it can export the recovered databases directly to an Office 365 tenant.