I have Googled the terms 'move path change full-text index catalog' and have come up with nothing that pertains to SQL 2005...only 2000 and 7.0....

So my question remains, how the heck do you change the location of the full-text catalog in SQL 2005? Must I delete and re-create? If so is there a good article on this process? I don't want to loose data or screw anything up....I can't imagine I am the first person who wants to do his?????

I figured this out without much help from Microsoft or the internet...but it seems that my lack of restore knowledge was my downfault. It seem sthat when restoring a database with Full-Text Catalogsusing the nice "wizard", you have the option of moving the databases AND the Full-Text Catalogs. I was trying way to hard to make this work using line commands which eventually foobared my last few transaction logs so I lost a few hours of data...no big deal in this project, glad it wasn't mission critical.

As far as I can remeber it is the same procedure as for previous versions. Although that there might be no KB article for that you can use the instructions and the found articles.

Jens K. Suessmeyer

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http://www.sqlserver2005.de
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The documentation is close but not detailed or correct enough for me to try and hack through it on a production box. In fact the sixth step is causing this error:

Msg 259, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Ad hoc updates to system catalogs are not allowed.

I even ran the follwoign command to allow updates to the catalog.

USE MailMeter;

GO

EXEC sp_configure 'allow updates', '1';

RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE;

After searching Google it would seem that system catalog updates is not even possible even when using this option. Please somoene tell me how to move the Full Text Catalog!!! I am floored that there isn't any documentation that I was able to find in regards to this action.

You can find the answer here:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345483.aspx

Just scroll down to the section regarding "Moving Full-Text Catalogs"

Good luck!

Here is the article for how to do it in previous versions:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/240867

However, this will not work in SQL Server 2005, because the instructions involve manually updating system tables, which is not allowed in SQL Server 2005.

I figured this out without much help from Microsoft or the internet...but it seems that my lack of restore knowledge was my downfault. It seem sthat when restoring a database with Full-Text Catalogsusing the nice "wizard", you have the option of moving the databases AND the Full-Text Catalogs. I was trying way to hard to make this work using line commands which eventually foobared my last few transaction logs so I lost a few hours of data...no big deal in this project, glad it wasn't mission critical.

People,

It is very very simple to move the FullText catalog with SQL Server 2005 ( remember the pain of doing it with SQL 2000)

Here is how :-

1. Detach the database which contains the FullText Catalog. While detaching from Management Studio, there is "check box" called "Keep FullText Catalogs". Make sure that this is selected.

2. Move the catalog files to the location where you want them.

3. Attach the database from Management Studio and this will try and find the FT catalogs

=> this step will fail and it will prompt you to find the location of FTcatalog. say yes

=> choose the FTCatalog path and presss OK

4. Bingo ! you're done. Now wasnt that simple compared to SQL 2000

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Sudar