Re: Defragging system drive on a DC

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From: Scott Napolitan [Microsoft] (scottnap_at_online.microsoft.com)
Date: 10/07/04 

Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 10:53:20 -0700

You always want to (and can only) "defrag" your Active Directory Database
from within NTDSUTIL. As far as your Disk Defrag tool in Windows is
concerned, the NTDS.DIT is just a file and it's most likely taking up
contiguous space anyway so defrag wont fix this. There may be other files,
however if you have your SYSVOL on the same drive that can potentially can
become fragmented, particularly if you have logon scripts there. I would
make sure that if you do run defrag onthis volume that you do it during off
peak hours, as it can affect performance dramatically.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Rob Bonfiglio" <rbonfiglio@wdecu.com> wrote in message
news:d79d379a.0410070901.390369a7@posting.google.com...
>I have a 2003 domain controller that is partitioned into 2 drives, C:
> and D:. When I setup Active Directory on this server I had the AD
> files put on the D: drive. If I go into computer management and I
> have defrag analyze the 2 drives drive C: comes back that it needs to
> be defragged and drive D: says that it does not. Since my AD stuff is
> on the C: drive is it safe to defrag my C: drive w/o putting the
> machine into Directory Restore mode? I had always thought that you
> weren't supposed to defrag a domain controller, and if you did that it
> should be in Directory Restore mode. However, since the database is
> not on the fragmented drive I wasn't sure if this would now be a
> possibility.
>
> Thanks for the help.

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