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Q. Why is placing the Sysvol directory on a separate partition a good practice?

A. The Sysvol (Shared System Volume) directory is replicated to every domain controller (DC) in a domain via the File Replication Service (FRS). Here are a couple of good reasons for placing Sysvol on a separate partition:

  • Sysvol's contents and its staging files might increase in size. Placing Sysvol on a separate partition contains the growth of the directory's contents and prevents them from consuming space on the boot partition, thereby preventing problems with other components and performance degradation.
  • Placing Sysvol on its own NTFS partition minimizes disk I/O, thereby reducing the chances of receiving journal wrap errors. FRS uses the NTFS journal to monitor changes in the file system. The journal contains the update sequence number (USN) of the NTFS changes that are stored on each NTFS partition. If FRS can't keep up with the pace of disk I/O, or if FRS is turned off for a period of time, the USN that's referenced in the FRS log might no longer exist in the NTFS volume journal. Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) increased the size of the NTFS journal from 32MB to 512MB by default (with a maximum configurable limit of 10GB) to help reduce the chance of the NTFS journal wrapping before FRS has replicated content.
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