Move database files

Applies to: SQL Server

In SQL Server, you can move system and user databases by specifying the new file location in the FILENAME clause of the ALTER DATABASE statement. Data, log, and full-text catalog files can be moved in this way. This option might be useful in the following situations:

• Failure recovery. For example, the database is in suspect mode, or is shut down, because of a hardware failure.

• Planned relocation.

• Relocation for scheduled disk maintenance.

In this section

Article	Description
Move user databases	Describes the procedures for moving user database files and full-text catalog files to a new location.
Move system databases	Describes the procedures for moving system database files to a new location.

Related content

• ALTER DATABASE (Transact-SQL)
• CREATE DATABASE
• Database detach and attach (SQL Server)