Do my ldf and mdf files need to be located on the same drive? 3

[brettz]

Do my ldf and mdf files need to be located on the same drive in which SQL Server 7.0 is installed?

 

[NathanGriffiths]

Not at all. Your mdf and ldf files can be located on ANY drive on the server, you can specify where you want them to be created when you create the database.
For performance it is often best to have the mdf (data) and ldf (log) files on separate physical drives.
(You cannot use network drives as file locations for SQL Server)

cheers

Nathan

 

[brettz]

Thanks for the quick response! Where can I give positive feedback?

Thanks again,

-Brett

 

[brettz]

So, you are saying that having the ldf on a separate drive from the mdf is advisable for better performance? Or are you saying to have the ldf and mdf on a separate drive than where SQL Server is installed? or both?

 

[MapMan]

Hi brettz,

Having your ldf and mdf of separate "physical" drives improves performance. Separating them alleviates any disk contention bottlenecks.

Keep in mind, disk contention can still occur if the "physical" drive is partitioned and the ldf and mdf files reside on separate partitions of the same "physical" drive.

HTH, MapMan

Assume nothing, question everything, be explicit not implicit, and you'll always be covered.

 

[Patten]

Apart from enhancing performance, placing the mdf and ldf files on the same drive is not always a good idea. Personally, I place the mdf file on Raid 5 and ldf file on Raid 1 . In the event of recovering the transaction log from backup, placing the log file on RAID 1 provides fault tolerance and generally improves read performance during recovery.