Calling all Gurus! way to backup NT registry other than tape

[veritas7]

Our tape drive is on our Exchange Server and we have had to revert to NT Backup; problem with Arcserver and Exchange wasnt working (yes we had agent). So I had been, on the PDC, exporting the registry and backing it up.

I have been told this won't work!(wont work as genuine backup) That the hive is locked. So, tonight, I made a new ERD for the PDC by doing:
start, run, rdisk /s

I also got the NT resource kit util and used regback.exe from the command line.

I am most concerned that the SAM will be recoverable since that is where the Exchange Service Account is. All other accounts can be made again, but as I understand it, Exchange will be looking for the old SID of the service account.

Would someone please let me know if I have a decent interim solution in place?

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this!

Kenneth

 

[dcain]

I am currently in the same position, using NT to backup Exchange due to problems with the A/s agent.

I also back up my PDC's c:\winnt\system32\config directory where the SAM is held.

If you were to suffer the loss of the PDC and Exchange server, you can recover your SAM if you rebuild your PDC with a FAT partition. Copy the \config directory back to another location on the PDC. Reboot to DOS. The registry does not load so you can copy the restored data back into the correct location.

Reboot to NT and your domain is back to normal.

I have used this method on disaster recovery tests several times now and it works fine. I have recreated my domain offsite and recovered Exchange.

If this isn't clear let me know and I'll try to do a step by step listing.


Hope this helps

David