Moving WSS 3.0 Databases

Dave — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:42:19 +0000

WSS 3.0 uses Microsoft SQL Embedded Edition (MSEE) for its data store. When MSEE is installed, the data files are installed to your C: drive by default. Since you do not want to have a file on your system drive that can grow exponentially, you need to move it to another drive. Here is how you do it.

Note: While completing this process your WSS site will be offline to your users.

Shutdown all Windows Sharepoint services & IIS Admin service: This will ensure that there are no locks on the files you need to move.
Open a cmd prompt and cd to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\binn
Enter sqlcmd -S \\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query -E: This starts the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Command Line Query Utility
Enter the following commands to view the available databases & hit Enter after each:

SELECT name from sysdatabases
GO

You should see a number of DBs, move the following 4 databases (GUID’s may be different):

SharePoint_Config_c464b7ce-59ef-4820-9f75-f46a0937c08e
SharePoint_AdminContent_451452bf-9dc0-40c9-be18-14f14bc23007
WSS_Search_NETSERVER_86a140c5958d4a5d97c8c2cbee745424
WSS_Content

Enter the following commands & hit Enter after each line. Repeat for each database.
- EXEC sp_detach_db @dbname = ‘Content_Database_name’
- GO
Move the databases to their new location. They can be found in C:\Windows\SSQL\Data\.mdf and _log.ldf
After the files have been moved run the following commands (Make sure to change the itialic sections to your specifics):

EXEC sp_attach_db @dbname = ‘Content_Database_name‘, @filename1 = ‘drive:\path\Data\.mdf’, @filename2 = ‘drive:\path\Data \_log.ldf’
Go

Repeat step 7 for each database you moved.
Restart IIS Admin services and all Windows Sharepoint services
Ensure your Sharepoint site is working

If this is done before you build your site it will take no time at all to move the DBs to the new location.

Dave Hildebrand.com » Sharepoint Server 3.0

Moving WSS 3.0 Databases