guicho12 Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 Hi, If this is not the right place for this question, please let me know where to post it. I would like some advise for the following issue. I have a Windows 2012 R2 domain controller, only one. Yes I know that there should be at least two, working on that down the road... My issue is that when I built the domain controller, I placed the AD database and Sysvol on a different drive, D:\ drive. Unfortunately, that hard drive malfunctioned a few weeks ago. The server crashed but I was able to bring it back up. I was also able to transfer the AD database to the C drive. The Sysvol share is still on that D drive. Now the drive seems to be dead and won't even show up as active. I managed to back up the sysvol folder a few weeks ago to another computer. What would be the best course of action to take to avoid rebuilding the whole DC if possible. 1 - Copy the Sysvol share to the C drive manually? 2 - remove/reinstall active directory and DNS by demoting the DC and repromoting it? 3 - Would it be a good idea to swap the malfunction hard drive with a good one, copy the SYSVOL folder to the good hard drive and reset the permissions to it? Would the DC work normally for replication, etc? If I go with option 2, can I import the GPO's that I backed up? Can the exisiting domain name be used? Will I have to re-create the user and objects? Thanks very much for any input, it's appriciated. I have searched google and found some links how to do steps 1 and 2, however, I would like someone's input as to what would be the best option to go with. I would like to avoid rebuilding the whole server if possible as there are a lot of setting that have been configured on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted February 24, 2015 Veteran Share Posted February 24, 2015 Sometimes, you can take an offline image of the server using something like clonezilla. Then you can restore that image onto drives that are functioning normally without an issue. Othertimes, you should backup the system state with windows backup as well as the physical locations to where your data resides. Then restore them on a previously made image. You don't need a second domain controller, you need good backups. Although a second domain controller would have also saved you from this issue, good backups would also save you from this issue and what most people do when they don't have a means to get a second domain controller or really a need for one (many places do not have a second one). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
binaryzero Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 ^ It's best practice to have 2 Domain controllers, so yes this is where one problem exists. Backups are another. http://www.edeconsulting.be/activedirectorypublications.asp < might point you in the right direction (I haven't had to time to read myself this morning, been a tad busy). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdnh Posted March 25, 2015 Share Posted March 25, 2015 This might help: http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/842162 look out for "Manually relocate an existing SYSVOL tree to a new location", if you have your sysvol files somewhere you can modify the registry. Edit: If you run this setup in your company you live in danger. Jared's completely right, those guys need to be at least two to run reliable in case of any problem. If you lose money with playing around restoring the ad by yourself you could get in trouble as well. Depending on your user count and ad objects and dependencies you'll might need weeks to continue business as usual. So, buy a second server those dl120 machines from hp aren't that expensive a dc doesn't need to run on a performance rig. Call Microsoft support if you don't know exactly what you do repairing your sysvol. Good luck even this thread was a bit older... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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