February 9, 2010 at 12:01 pm
I have a question regarding Installation of SQL.
Whenever I have my installation files located on D:\(for example), and I instruct SQL during installation to install everything to D:\, there are still a ton of files that get copied to the C:\ partition (%SYSTEMDRIVE%). This is a big problem for me, as most of the customers site I install and configure SQL on, has a very limited amount of space on there System Drive.
Is there a way to make SQL dump these file (Im guessing setup support files and such) to another drive during installation, so the System Drive is not impacted whatsoever?
Also, when ever I install the Service Pack for SQL, even though SQL is installed on D:\, my System Drive (C:\) shrinks dramatically. As with the above question, is there a way to prevent this from happening?
Thanks in advance for any help.
February 9, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Is SQL express or Visual Studio already installed on the box? That is the only thing that I can think of that would cause some of the files to be written to the Boot partition.
I never install SQL on C drive, in fact, none of my boxes even have a drive C. (Well, my drive C is only 7 Mb, I cannot make it any smaller, and I cannot totally get rid of it). It usually gets installed to drive H, and everything is there, nothing is installed in the Boot partition, which is usually Drive F
Just to clarify:
Boot partition is where the Operating System is located
System partition is Drive C, where the NTLoader file is located
Andrew SQLDBA
February 9, 2010 at 1:39 pm
AndrewSQLDBA (2/9/2010)
Is SQL express or Visual Studio already installed on the box? That is the only thing that I can think of that would cause some of the files to be written to the Boot partition.I never install SQL on C drive, in fact, none of my boxes even have a drive C. (Well, my drive C is only 7 Mb, I cannot make it any smaller, and I cannot totally get rid of it). It usually gets installed to drive H, and everything is there, nothing is installed in the Boot partition, which is usually Drive F
Just to clarify:
Boot partition is where the Operating System is located
System partition is Drive C, where the NTLoader file is located
Andrew SQLDBA
SQL Management Studio is also being installed. C:\ would be my boot drive, and System drive I would suppose. The OS is installed to C:\, but I am instructing SQL to install everything to D:\. After I run the setup and SQL is installed, there is still a "Microsoft SQL Server" folder under C:\Program Files. Under that is the COM, DTS, SHARED, TOOLS, SETUP BOOTSTRAP, etc. folders. On D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\ I see the installed instances, like MSSQL.1 and so forth.
And from what I mean by telling SQL to install to D:\, I mean, during setup, I hit advances, and change everything that is listing as installed applications from C:\Pro... to D:\Pro...
After I do this, the SQL SP eats up C:\ drive space. And the above explanation about installing to D:\ would apply when I do an upgrade from 2000 to 2005/2008. I know that 2000 was also installed to the D:\ drive as well.
This is whats leading to my confusion about why C:\ is being impacted, whenever I have everything inside of SQL, and during SQL install pointing at another drive.
February 9, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Make certain that you select "Custom Install" as well. That way you modify the data location and the Binary location
Andrew SQLDBA
February 9, 2010 at 5:01 pm
That is what I am saying....
Is Visual Studio or SQL Express already installed on that box? If so, then that is why SQL will want to install part of the files in the Boot drive.
Sounds like you need to swipe the drive and start again if so.
I have installed SQL on other drives and all the files are exactly where I tell the setup utility to place them. It does not matter what you tell SQL to install, it will install everything in the location that you specify, if VS or SQL Express is not already on the box. Even Office will install some of VS, so verify this first.
Andrew SQLDBA
February 9, 2010 at 7:50 pm
I would agree with AndrewSQLDBA. SQL Server 2008 installation has many places to change the "default" file locations of everything. If you are installing more than the just the Database Engine you will probably have to do "advanced" or "custom" on each installation window for that service to ensure it does not install on your "C" drive.
With service pack installs I would check with Microsoft documentation. I would expect the installations are configured to use "temp" directories that it may point to "C" drive through varibables (example %SYSTEMDRIVE% or %SYSTEMROOT%). There may be some way to tell it to use "temp" directories on another partition.
Shawn Melton
Twitter: @wsmelton
Blog: wsmelton.github.com
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