I’m frequently creating new databases in NAV. One annoyance was NAV’s insistence on the default file location. In my dev environment this was always where I had installed SQL.
Not where I want my databases.
I spent some time investigating and after watching file system and registry access on both server and client I wasn’t able to see it grab any relevant values from those spots. From what I can tell after watching packets between client and server with a packet sniffer, the NAV client is parsing the file location from the sp_helpfile stored procedure. The solution? NAV is essentially following the Master database.
How to move system databases in SQL Server:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345408.aspx
Just move the Master database to the spot you’d like the default file locations. Now when I specify Database Files… Yay!
The only downside is that is also will want to put the Transaction Log Files in the same file path. Small price to pay. 
Does anyone else have a better way of doing this? It would at least be nice if NAV could somehow use the default file locations specified within SQL.
