“Unable to access database file location”. Hmm. The disk and folder I specified was there, no doubt about it. The back-end server and the Front End was on different subnets, so at first I thought this was [...]]]> I was setting up a OCS R2 installation when I got this message when creating the pool:

“Unable to access database file location”. Hmm. The disk and folder I specified was there, no doubt about it. The back-end server and the Front End was on different subnets, so at first I thought this was a firewall problem. The next step was to check if this was a permissions problem – gave my user full access on the SQL server, full control on the database file folders, set my user as local admin, gave the SQL Server service account full control one the catalogs – but no change, still the same error.

To narrow down the issue I tried to create the database with the dbsetup.wsf. This went without problems, but the database and log files were now on the default partition for SQL Server, and not on the desired partition. Therefore I ran the script specifying the file locations:

cscript dbsetup.wsf /sqlserver:SQLSERVER
 /dbpath:f:\rtcdata /logpath:f:\rtclog /dyndbpath:f:\rtcdata /dynlogpath:fx:\rtclog /role:ee
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved.

Connecting to SQL Server on trdbsql2k5adp05
(Database rtcdyn doesn’t exist.)
Creating database rtcdyn
Failed to create database rtcdyn
Error (
  name:        Error
  description:
  number:      -2147216320
  message:
)

 Error: Error. Well, not the most describing error message..

Next step was to create a database in SQL Management Studio instead. There I found the cause of the problem: I could not browse and choose my F:-disk as file location. (It was actually possible to specify the F:-disk by just typing it, as there was already some databases created on F:). The reason for this was that this was a SQL Cluster, and the F:-disk was not properly set up for use with the cluster. Now I could successfully create the pool using the default file locations and skipping the F:-disk.

I would have discovered this right away if not the “Browse”-button in the Create Pool wizard had been greyed out: