Putting Exchange and Active Directory on a seperate hard drive.

I was wondering if i install another hard drive on the server and transfer
the Active directory or Exchange or both to that hard drive.

1) is that possible?
2) is it a good idea?
3) how can it be done?

main reason why i'd like to do this, if operating system crashes i atleast
have something left.

Thank You

Dave
Fri May 09 13:32:34 PDT 2008

In my opinion, spreading data around is not how you protect yourself from
system crashes. Do you have a reliable, tested backup strategy in place,
including keeping backups offsite for disaster recovery purposes? RAID?
UPS?

That said, personally I put my Exchange data on its own partition. I do
this so that runaway user files can't bring down Exchange. There's a lot of
data that can be safely moved, but I wouldn't move anything AD-related. See
this white paper:

Moving Data Folders for Windows Small Business Server 2003
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sbs/2003/maintain/movedata.mspx


"Guru" <Guru@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:DACF6488-5DC8-4C29-8571-B4DF5B41E2CF@microsoft.com...
>I was wondering if i install another hard drive on the server and transfer
> the Active directory or Exchange or both to that hard drive.
>
> 1) is that possible?
> 2) is it a good idea?
> 3) how can it be done?
>
> main reason why i'd like to do this, if operating system crashes i atleast
> have something left.
>
> Thank You

kj
Fri May 09 13:44:51 PDT 2008

Guru wrote:
> I was wondering if i install another hard drive on the server and
> transfer the Active directory or Exchange or both to that hard drive.
>
> 1) is that possible?
> 2) is it a good idea?
> 3) how can it be done?
>
> main reason why i'd like to do this, if operating system crashes i
> atleast have something left.
>
> Thank You


Hopefully you'd have a recent and verified good backup "left". For standard
SBS sized systems, there's not much difference between the OS and AD.
Without one you don't have the other.

Separating exchange, OS(&AD), and user files does have merit, but for other
reasons.
--
/kj

Cliff
Fri May 09 19:27:33 PDT 2008

Yes it can be done, but it will only partially accomplish your goal. Let me
be *VERY* clear:

If the OS crashes, having AD on another drive will do you no good.

I feel the need to repeat that:

If the OS crashes, having AD on another drive will DO YOU NO GOOD.

Okay. Now, if you need to move these things for disk-space reasons, you can
move AD using the following:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842162

and moving exchange:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821915

And now I'll repeat myself in a different way:
RELOCATING THESE FILES WILL NOT BE AN EFFECTIVE DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN!!!

Make backups! Specifically, AD ties itself to the system registry, and
thus requires a "system state" backup. That's why there is no AD-only
backup in windows!!!!!

-Cliff

"Guru" <Guru@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:DACF6488-5DC8-4C29-8571-B4DF5B41E2CF@microsoft.com...
> I was wondering if i install another hard drive on the server and transfer
> the Active directory or Exchange or both to that hard drive.
>
> 1) is that possible?
> 2) is it a good idea?
> 3) how can it be done?
>
> main reason why i'd like to do this, if operating system crashes i atleast
> have something left.
>
> Thank You