How to host a database on a network share drive

_{Friday, June 28, 2013 2:18 PM}

Hi,

I have google this question a lot and it has gotten me no where. I am trying to put a database on a network drive so my office can access the database.  This is the only way all the computers are connected, since some are on LAN and some are connected to wifi.

I read that I should run the query:

CREATE DATABASE [networked] ON  PRIMARY 
( NAME = N'networked', FILENAME = N'filepath' , SIZE = 3072KB , MAXSIZE = UNLIMITED, FILEGROWTH = 1024KB ) 
LOG ON 
( NAME = N'networked_log', FILENAME = N'filepath' , SIZE = 1024KB , MAXSIZE = 2048GB , FILEGROWTH = 10%) 
GO

But I get the error:

Msg 5133, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Directory lookup for the file "" failed with the operating system error 53(The network path was not found.).
Msg 1802, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
CREATE DATABASE failed. Some file names listed could not be created. Check related errors.

The filepath I am entering is the path to the network share drive (\yadda\yadda\yadda)

I read somewhere that I need to grant "NT Service\MSSQL$SQLEXPRESS" permission to the network drive, but I cannot do this because it says "cannot find the object" and I can only browse to find objects on the network drive already.

What should I do, and are there any better alternatives?

_{Friday, June 28, 2013 2:45 PM ✅Answered}

. I am trying to put a database on a network drive so my office can access the database.  

Hello,

locating database files on a NAS / network share is not supported and a very bad idea; the slow network connection will cause really bad performance.

And it makes no sense; the clients connect to the SQL Server, not to the database files, so all clients can already the database, independent of the database files are located.

Olaf Helper

Blog Xing

_{Sunday, June 30, 2013 4:56 PM ✅Answered}

I have google this question a lot and it has gotten me no where. I am trying to put a database on a network drive so my office can access the database.  This is the only way all the computers are connected, since some are on LAN and some are connected to wifi.

I think you are going down the wrong path due to a misunderstanding of SQL Server architecture.  Users and client applications do not access database files directly.  Applications connect to the SQL Server database service to use the database.  Only the database service needs access to the database files, which are typically created on a local disk or SAN for performance reasons.  Your users will need network access to the machine running the database service.

Dan Guzman, SQL Server MVP, http://www.dbdelta.com

_{Sunday, June 30, 2013 4:24 PM}

I agree with Olaf.

If you still want to explore this option, then first step for you to investigate is what service account is used by the SQL Server service.

Tibor Karaszi, SQL Server MVP | web | blog

_{Friday, July 1, 2016 6:28 PM}

I've been trying to figure out how to do this because I need more room than my hard drive has to just keep data I would like to keep locally. I don't necessarily need it to run like a big fancy database - I am just a lowly SQL Server user attempting to figure out a way to run my queries without running out of physical space on my hard drive.