Ok, a funny thing happened at work today. I had to write a script to move a DB’s files to another drive. Sounds easy enough, huh? Well in theory it was easy, but leave it to me to mess it up. Now, this was just a dry-run so I don’t feel too bad about it, and it gives me a chance to test my process. So, here’s what happened.

My process was this:

1. Run move stmts for all files.
2. Take DB offline.
3. Run PS script that moves the files.

The PS script selects from sys.master_files to get a list of the files to move. Here’s the problem… I’ve already run the move statements so SQL thinks they’re already in the new location. Therefore, the PS script can’t move them from their current location. However, good practice saves the day.

As a habit I always save a copy of sys.master_files to another table in case something happens. Now it’s a simple matter of changing my PS script from selecting from sys.master_files to selecting from sys.master_filesSEAN. Now I’m back in business. That’s the thing I find about good practices; they help you in ways you can’t even predict most of the time.

Here are some other general steps I take to protect against one thing or another:
1. I always try to group like objects in the same schema. It’s just a good idea.
2. I always copy the system DBs when upgrading or patching SQL. Sure I can restore from backup, and I have those too, but if something big happens and I have to completely re-install from scratch it’s much easier to just drop the old system DB files out there than it is to restore from backup.
3. Whenever I’m done working on an important prod system and it’s time to move on to something else, I always close all prod windows and even disconnect from it in object explorer. I don’t want any chance there’s a way to open a new connection to it and do something dumb.

I’d love to give you guys a huge list, and I know there are more, I just can’t think of any right this second.