Lost And Found Folder in Active Directory

Lost And Found Folder in Active Directory

Hello Guys,

Today I would share info about Lost and Found folder in AD.

Many administrators don’t have even idea about what is Lost and Found folder.This is just a container in AD that is hidden by default (you can say)It will only be available when you set the setting to Advanced. Open up your console of Active Directory Users and Computers, and make sure that Advanced is selected in the View menu.Then you will be able to see the Lost and Found Folder.

Orphan Objects :Lost and Found folder basically contain ORPHAN objects.

Now what is Orphaned objects : The objects that don't have any parent are called as orphand objects.

Objects usually become orphans through AD replication . Every AD domain controller contains a complete read/write copy of the domain database. That means that it is possible for two administrators to make conflicting changes to AD at the same time.

Suppose one administrator changes user XX's  password, while another changes the user XX's name. AD replicates each attribute individually, so there’s no conflict, even though two administrators made changes to the same user.Because here there are two attribute and AD will replicate both individually.

But in some scenarios these conflicts will not be easy to handle by AD as well.

For example, suppose that one administrator moved a user into the Admin organizational unit (OU), at the same time another administrator deleted the Admin OU on another domain controller. When replication occurs,You will not get the user account in Admin OU it will be in Lost and Found.

When the Administror deletes the OU “Admin” in the Additional Domain Controller  and simultaneously on the other side Administrator is moving the one object called “Vijay” to OU “Admin”

The deleted object will take time replicate. So on the other location (DC) the Administrator does not know the the OU “Admin” is deleted . he will move the user “Vijay” to OU “Admin”

 

Once the replication is done in both the DC’’s then the OU “Admin" will be deleted from the DC also.
Then the moved object “Vijay” will be stored in “LOST AND FOUND FOLDER”

Also When we use Microsoft’s MoveTree utility to move objects between domains, the utility first moves objects into the Lost and Found folder, they are then copied to the destination domain and removed from Lost and Found. If MoveTree fails to work correctly, you might find objects still lingering in Lost and Found.