Newbie - What's the default location of my database

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Jonathan - 30 Jun 2008 15:25 GMT

I had an issue with a new Dell laptop running Vista and Dell says I have to
do an Vista re-install. About a month ago I downloaded SQL Server Express
2005 and have been working on a local database. The thing is that Vista
hasn't been allowing me to run Explorer.exe so I haven't so far succeeded in
opening SQL Server Express to see where I stored the database I was working
on in order to copy it from the hard drive to another hard drive.

I am able to open a browse window using Windows Task Manager to start a new
task.

I have been looking through a lot of folders trying to find the database
file or files.

What would it's extension be?

Where would it likely be installed by default?

If I do a Vista re-install, re-download SQL Express, how can I restore the
database?

TIA

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Aaron Bertrand [SQL Server MVP] - 30 Jun 2008 15:38 GMT

> I have been looking through a lot of folders trying to find the database
> file or files.
>
> What would it's extension be?

*.mdf, *.ndf, *.ldf

> Where would it likely be installed by default?

Somewhere under:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\

> If I do a Vista re-install, re-download SQL Express, how can I restore the
> database?

You should back it up first, before you perform a reinstall. Can you access
the database using a query tool of any kind? How have you been working with
the database up until now? Are you using SSMS Express, or Visual Studio,
or...?

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Adi - 30 Jun 2008 15:39 GMT

> I had an issue with a new Dell laptop running Vista and Dell says I have to
> do an Vista re-install. About a month ago I downloaded SQL Server Express
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
>
> TIA

Search for files with the extension mdf or ndf or ldf.

Adi

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Alex Wilson - 01 Jul 2008 11:22 GMT

If you can open a cmd box, you can use dir to locate the files

start | run | cmd.exe

then
cd\
dir C:\*.mdf /s

that will recursively search your C drive for any in any folder with
the extension MDF.
you will also need to look for .ldf and .ndf (assuming you used the
default extensions)

Alex R. Wilson

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