Comprehensive Restore

In addition to restoring the Active Directory database, a comprehensive restore will reload additional data outside of Active Directory that is connected to AD.

A comprehensive restore is required to move AD to a new computer.

The additional data includes the following:

• The Internet address settings
• The Domain Name Server (DNS) database and settings
• Cryptographic keys, including the private key for the EFS recovery agent
• The DSRM recovery password
• File security and registry security settings
• Optional application databases that are related to Active Directory, including Certificate Services, COM+, DHCP, IIS, WINS, and Exchange.

A comprehensive restore will extract from the .BKF file the AD data files from the System State and some additional data files that are not part of the System State. The additional data files are located in C:\Windows and in C:\Documents and Settings.

System State is not sufficient

The System State alone is not sufficient for a comprehensive restore. Additional data files are required to move AD to a new computer. If you let UMove create the .BKF file for you, it will run NTBACKUP and back up the minimal set of required files. For a complete list of minimal required files see The Layout of the Staging Folder.

Location of data folders

A comprehensive restore gives you the option of choosing a new location for the data folders for Active Directory. You can change the location of the NTDS data file, the NTDS logs, and the SYSVOL folder.

For more information

For more information see Simple Restore, Results of Moving Active Directory, Moving Application Databases, and Restore on Same Computer.