Moving MSDE Data Files to another PC

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TSP - 21 Sep 2003 01:09 GMT

I'm fairly new to using ACCESS 2000 with MSDE on just a
LOCAL machine. Recently had a hardware failure and had to
move everything to a new PC. The hard drive on the old
was still intact. I reloaded OFFICE and MSDE from scratch
on the new PC and installed the old hard drive as
secondary and used explorer to copy the MDF/LDF files into
the DATA MSSQL directory. When I try to use those data
files MSDE can't seem to find them or doesn't recognize
them. Do these files need to be copied into MSDE in some
other way, can you not move SQL databases between
different instances of MSDE? I'm kind of stumped and
REALLY don't want to lose everything on those files. Is
there some procedure I'm not following. Any ideas ????

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Brian Bischof - 21 Sep 2003 05:38 GMT

Create a new database with the same name and then copy the backup data files
onto the ones just created.

HTH,

Brian Bischof

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> I'm fairly new to using ACCESS 2000 with MSDE on just a
> LOCAL machine. Recently had a hardware failure and had to
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> REALLY don't want to lose everything on those files. Is
> there some procedure I'm not following. Any ideas ????

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Service - 22 Sep 2003 00:11 GMT

An alternate method is to "detach" the database on the source PC, copy the
actual .mdf and .ldf files to the target PC, then "attach" the database on
the target PC. It accomplishes the same thing as backup and restore, but
detach and attach take less time than backup and restore. There is a lot of
documentation out there on how to do this. Start by going to
search.microsoft.com and searching on "detach database" and "attach
database"

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> Create a new database with the same name and then copy the backup data files
> onto the ones just created.
[quoted text clipped - 27 lines]
> > REALLY don't want to lose everything on those files. Is
> > there some procedure I'm not following. Any ideas ????

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tsp - 22 Sep 2003 03:44 GMT

Thanks Brian for suggesting copying the database. That
idea sent me down the path of doing the DETACH and ATTACH
that Kent subsequently suggested when SQL7 would not let
me copy over one of it's files without the DETACH.

I ran the DETACH and ATTACH SP's from the 'masterdb'. It
worked fine but I wasn't sure if there was a better way.

I have my files back and functional.

I'm new but learning more about this beast every day with
your help.

Thanks Brian and Kent for your help !!!!

>-----Original Message-----
>An alternate method is to "detach" the database on the source PC, copy the
[quoted text clipped - 39 lines]
>
>.

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