The best way is to do a full backup and then do a full restore on the new server. If you have the management console, you can do a full backup and restore from it. Otherwise you will need to do a command line backup and restore. Here's a good tutorial on how to perform a full backup: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186289.aspx You should probably avoid the WITH FORMAT option unless you are backing up to a remote drive. Here's Microsoft's backup and restore directory: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187048.aspx. You should be able to find an option for restoring your database here.