Win2K Server NTDS Logs (LONG)

[Gabriel]

HI,
I would like to get your advice on a Issue with one of My servers.
It is a Win2k Server (DC+SP1) - It has a very low space on it's system drive.
Now I have a catch 22...
The problem is that inside WINNT\NTDS there are many log files (Identical in size - Each 10,240Kb).
The log files should be deleted after System state Backup.
Now I have found this articl at MS Site:
<a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q272425" target="_blank">http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q272425</a>
In short It says that I have to Install SP2.
Now, I can't install SP2 - I have no sufficient diskspace (only 150Mb) on the drive.

The final and most important question is - Can I safely delete the (old) Log files under WINNT\NTDS?
If any of you can answer (Or better Find me a Technical paper on this) I would be more than happy.

I would appriciate your Help
Gabriel Levi

[silencio]

I'd recommend deleting something else on the drive to make room for the service pack. Based on the way circular logging appears to work, those log files should be deleted only after the last transaction in it is committed to the ntds.dit.

What's the last access or last modified date on each file? If the transactions are committed and the files are just not deleted in error, the access/modified date may give you a little evidence for manually deleting them or moving them.

You also might be able to move the log files with ntdsutil.exe without breaking anything Check out the link below. ..and is this the only DC in the domain? If so you might want to bring another up and make it the ops master...

<a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q315131" target="_blank">http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q315131</a>

[gazzak]

This happened with our W2K server too. One morning no one could log on and I found 1MB of space left on the C: drive!! The NTDS database files can be moved easily using the ntdsutil utility as mentioned in the post before.
Here are the steps...
Restart the server pressing F8 during startup
Select Directory services restore mode
Log in using the administraors account. This is stored locally on each DC and may be different for each DC in your enterprise
Open a command prompt and type ntdsutil
type files and enter
type move db to <drive>\<folder> where drive and folder make up the full path to the new location. Press enter
Type quit and enter, type quit again and enter
Restart the DC.
The log files are being written to constantly, so moving the log files to a different disk prevents disk contention and should see a speed increase overall.
As for deleting them well I asked the same question using a different account name than this one and the reply I got was its OK to delete anything that has reached at least 10MB. I backed all the files up as a precaution and then deleted all of the files except ntds.dit, edb.chk, res1.log, res2.log and the most recent edb*.log files. All worked fine and has been ever since!

Good luck