An easier scenario might be to create a small (say 100 MB) partition
with a minimal NT configuration and ADSM installed on the same machine
where the NT server is installed.

This eliminate the need to reinstall NT in the case of a hardware failure.

The best possible situation is to have this "emergency partition" installed
on an external device.

It's also not a bad idea to keep around a diskette version of the NT Boot
Manager as described below in case the primary partition gets trashed.

Anyway, assuming ADSM is used to regulary backup the NT server partition
the disaster recovery procedure would be as follows:

     1. Boot the 100 MB emergency partition.

        If the damaged partition being recovered is the primary
        partition, the following additional steps must be taken
        first:

            - Build an diskette version of the NT boot manager
              by copying the following files to a formatted
              blank diskette:

                     bootsect.dos (must be the first file copied !!!)
                     boot.ini     (see note below)
                     ntdetect.com
                     ntldr

              With the exception of boot.ini these files may be copied
              from any other NT machine. Since boot.ini describes the
              layout of OS's, partitions and drives for the boot manager,
              the specific copy of this file for the particular machine
              must be used or duplicated.

            - Start the emergency parition from diskette based boot
              manager.

            - Copy (or use ADSM to restore) the above four system files
              (again, bootsect.dos MUST be copied first) to the cleanly
              formatted partition being recovered.


     2. Use ADSM to restore the parition:

              dsmc res c:/*.* -subdir=yes

     3. Manually copy the NT registry files into the System32 Config
        directory.

        ADSM always stages a copy the system registry files into a
        directory named adsm.sys/registry on the system partition
        before backing them up to the ADSM server.

        Since the copy of NT being recovered is not active these files
        may be directly copied into the NT System32 Config directory.


The damaged partition should now be completely recovered and startable.

In general I think the above procedure is much faster and more reliable
than trying to do the recovery via some sort of reinstall or repair of
NT with the emergency repair diskette.

The best possible situation would be to have an external removable hard
drive (like an iomega zip drive perhaps) to boot from in the case of a
disk crash/hardware failure.

Hope this helps ....

Pete Tanenhaus
ADSM Client Development