Question

Is there a way to change the back up location for only my database in my database project settings or do I have to do that in a Pre-Deployment script and uncheck the back up database before deployment from the Deployment configuration file?

Answer 1

The backup option uses the SQL Server default backup directory. You can change that location only by editing the registry. Unfortunately, you can’t set a different backup location for each database.

Location (For SQL 2008)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQLServer

Change…

BackupDirectory

For more on changing SQL server default paths…
http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1583

If you are feeling adventurous, you could change the registry value in your pre-deployment script and reset it with you post-deployment script. Use “xp_instance_regread” and “xp_instance_regwrite” to do that. USE WITH CAUTION!

More on that -> http://sqladm.blogspot.com/2010/09/xpinstanceregwrite-syntax.html

If you notice in your deployment script…the code to read the registry entry looks like this…

EXEC @rc = [master].[dbo].[xp_instance_regread] N'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', N'Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer', N'BackupDirectory', @dir output, 'no_output'

If you are careful, you could read, change, and restore the path during your deployment.

Hope this helps!