Can you copy and paste the Active Directory Database from one DC to another to recover it?

Warning!!! Do not do this.

This is an interesting question from class. To set this up I added a second Domain Controller into virtual network. I then stopped the AD DS server on the new DC and deleted the contents of c:\Windows\NTDS.
The next step was to copy the contents of the database folder from the good DC to the target DC. To do this, I also had to stop the NDTS service on the source DC.

Once the copy was completed, I restarted the AD DS service on the source DC. I then attempted to restart the AD DS service of the target DC. It did not like it very well. As a matter of fact, while attempting to restart the AD DS service, the DC went into reboot. As a matter of fact, the system was not able to boot after that.
This is a good example of why we test these ideas on virtual machines with snapshots, and not actual production servers.

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Jason Yoder, MCT

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