Best practices on preserving user profiles during server reload

[mcnumara]

We had a physical drive fail on our RAID Volume, and as a result, bad block information was copied to the RAID Volume.

Long story short, we are going to reload the server. As this is a domain controller, what are the best practices for reloading the server while preserving user profiles? We do not wish to create user profiles per machine again for the same domain due to domain trust issues.

Thanks.

[cluberti]

Recreate the profile path and shares (as configured in group policy) on a server with the same name (for offline files cache reasons), and make sure that the user has modify access to the share, and NTFS change control on all subfolders and files in their profile directory. This is (basically) the way policy creates the folder structure when a user first logs onto the domain with a roaming profile, so this is about all you need to do.

As to it being a DC, make sure it holds no FSMO roles when you dcpromo it down (and you've allowed for replication), and rebuild it with the same name (removing the old computer object from AD before rebuilding). Name it the same, and rejoin the domain and re-dcpromo (if you still want it to be a DC).