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SQL Server 2008 R2 Setup How to chaneg system drive from C to D

  • November 21, 2012 at 12:45 am

    #266310

    Hi,

    I have changed the following the "Shared Install DIrectory and Instance Directory" to D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server.

    But the System Drive is still C:\Windows\system32. As a result there is insuffiicent space available.

    Is it possible to change it to D? Or the only way is to clear some space out from C? Thanks

  • November 21, 2012 at 3:32 am

    #1561166

    As far as I have seen, it still needs some space in the directory where OS is installed to copy the required binaries, so I think you would need to clear some space it mentions during the installation starts.

  • November 21, 2012 at 5:38 am

    #1561211

    SQL server must be installed on the same drive as the %SystemDrive% variable points to; there's no getting around that, but the binaries themselves don't take up nearly as much room as the databases.

    you can move both user and system databases to another drive.

    I've changed the default locations on a lot of my machines here; here's a screenshot of my own dev server for example; I added a new huge drive for development, and then changed the default paths to point to a folder i created:

    after that, I backed up and restored to the new drive...in fact i could not stop the service and move the mdf/ldf files.

    My %systemdrive% is formatted at 512 bytes per secor, and the new 3 terabyte drive is formatted to sector sizes 0f 4096; you get an error when trying to attach the drive if it had a different sector size than where it is being attached.

    after migrating the databases via backup, i went to the old drive folders and removed the mdfs/ldfs and moved the previous backups that were on that drive still as well.

    after that, at a minimum, i'd consider moving the tempdb, and msdb databases, if not all databases.

    there's an article here that has better instructions than i could post:

    MSDN How To Move System Databases

    Lowell

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