Where do Sharepoint uploads go to?

[katem]

Hi everyone

Firstly I'll apologise if this is a stupid question or I've posted in the wrong forum/repeated a question but I couldn't find the answer!

I've uploaded some photos to our sharepoint server (http://servername/network photos) but what I can't figure out is where, e.g. what file path, it store the photos I've uploaded? Or does it just store them in a database?

I'm a newbie to all this sharepoint stuff hence my question.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Kate

[meastaugh1]

Yep, straight into the database.

It is possible to map a drive to a sharepoint document library if you need to (as long as the client meets the prerequisites).

[katem]

Thanks for the quick response meastaugh1. So over time, if the school used this to store all the photos, would the database become too bloated and slow the whole thing down?
And if the database crashed & burned, all the photo's have gone 8O
Do you know the usual file path the database is stored to so I can back it up?
Thanks again.

[meastaugh1]

over time, if the school used this to store all the photos, would the database become too bloated and slow the whole thing down?

You can scale sharepoint out by separating site collections into different databases. If you only have one site collection, I think you may be limited in spanning multiple databases.

I think MS used to recommend 10GB per database on SPS2003/WSS2, but they are more vague with the newer versions. From a sharepoint (WSS3/MOSS) webcast, I think I recall the MS guy saying that there were no limits imposed by sharepoint, but more determined by whether you can manage larger database sizes (in terms of backup/restore etc). You should be able to go up to 40GB safely, possibly more, performance dependent.

Our WSS database is currently 17GB and performance is great.

And if the database crashed & burned, all the photo's have gone 8O

Yes, like any database, it should be backed up regularly.

Do you know the usual file path the database is stored to so I can back it up?
Thanks again.

It depends which flavour of SQL you're running. If you're on WSS3 with SQL embedded (the SQL engine installed by WSS), the default location will be:
C:\WINDOWS\SYSMSI\SSEE\MSSQL.2005\MSSQL\Data
MS don't give you the choice to specify data location at install time for SQL Embedded, but you can move it off the system volume using osql.

Having said that, for a full fidelity backup, you probably ought to use the stsadm -o backup command.