Structure of ntds.dit

[Griffiths]

I’m sorry if my query sounds bit silly. But I’m in urgent need to know how does the ntds.dit file works. I mean, I need to know exact information about internal structure of ntds.dit file and how does it works.

Thanks in advance.

[Patter-Son]

Hello,

Just checkout the following Articles, this will work for you:
How the Data Store Works: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc772829.aspx

Active Directory Explorer v1.44: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb963907.aspx

[MikeY007]

In short ntds.dit file is a database collection of multiple tables but as you asked about its exact structure even I’m unsure about it. As per mu research it appears like there is no good documentation regarding this as there may be no need to inject it directly but use the APIs Windows provides. Better than that I can suggest you to keep playing with ESE tools, you will probably come to know many things about the same.

[Fawiza]

I dont think Microsoft is ever going to unveil the internals of DB ever. What you can do is use the operational attribute called dumpDatabase to output the DB contents to a file for the attributes specified