# Where is my SQL database stores? Server Crash :(



## Lattman (Oct 21, 2006)

Hi guys,


Last friday I decided to add a descrete video card to my server as graphics were poor and slow with onboard video, since I installed SBS2008 premium my server has been extremely slow at times, sometimes responding like a PIII while it's a recent i5 760 with 6GB Ram and RAID5 drives. The server taking way too long to shut down for installation of new video card, I decided to pull A/C plug as I was in a rush, this in turn made windows unbootable and 2 of the 3 hard drives noisy as if they were stuck..after a little nudge on the drives they started functionning normally but still no luck in getting back into O/S. I tried everything from a repair install, to chkdsk to sfc /scannow, no luck, I only get a cursor in safe mode with a black background and nothing in regular or last know config.

I then decided to take a spare drive and install Win7 to get users going again, was able to access that raid drive as slave in order to allow users to access their data but SBS O/S is pretty much dead. I had SQL setup for M$ business contact manager which I had not backed up for a while, considering I have access to the faulty O/S drive as slave, can I withdraw the BCM SQL database? How would I go about doing this and where is it located?

Thanks all for your time, has been hell for me this week end with all this :down:


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

By default the databases are in program files folder of the original C drive. You would have to install SQL server again and mount the databases. 

If the drives were RAID 5 he array should repair itself if you give it enough time. I would mount the array again with the original drives and go into the RAID utility to see what is going on. You may have made things worse by messing with it.


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## Lattman (Oct 21, 2006)

First off thank you for taking the time in responding to my issue. The problem is not with the RAID drive, it is with SBS2008 corrupting because I unplugged power to it while it was shutting down, I let it reboot on its own initially, chkdsk ran, then got blue screen (memory dump) a few times, then chkdsk again which took like 6 hours of restoring security certificates to default on like 200k files, then got black screen in normal, black screen with cursor in safe with none responding to CTRL+ALT+DEL or repair install, read up on this as others have experienced it, after trying countless methods came to the conclusion that everybody else restored backups or re-installed O/S.

So as far as SQL goes as I have very limited knowledge on it, set it up a few years ago and haven't touched it since, I would have to install SQL before restoring it from old O/S? Or is there a way of copying the database as backup?

Thx again,


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Like I said, the SQL data files are by default in the program files directory and they are MDF files. SQL runs on top of the OS so you would have to install Windows first. If the OS is on a RAID volume then it is a RAID issue since you probably corrupted the data across all of the drives. Run the RAID utility to make sure there are no physical disk issues and go from there. Running chkdsk runs it against the volume, not against the individual drives in the array.


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