Move the content index files on Index and Query servers

We initially created our content index for index and query servers on one drive and later had to move them to new disk drives on the servers. After a little looking around, I figured that this move can be achieved by using the stsadm command utility.

In our case we had a web farm with 3 front-end servers and 1 index server. Only one of the front-end server is being used as the query server.

Move the files for the index server

1. Find the title of the SSP for which you want to move the content index. It is the name of the SSP and can be founf by going to Central Administration and looking under the Shared Services Providers
2. Open the command prompt on the server and if the 12 hive/bin path is not in your PATH environment variable, navigate to it. It is usually C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin.
3. Run the following command: stsadm -o editssp -title SharedServices1 -indexlocation e:\search. In my case, the new location was e:\search. The folder does not need to be created before hand. Executing the stsadm command creates it.
4. Delete the old index location. The above command copies the files.
5. If you are moving the index for multiple SSPs, repeat steps 1-4 for each additional SSP.

Move the index files for the Query server

1. Logon to the query server and open the command prompt
2. Navigate to the 12 hive/bin folder if the 12 hive/bin is not in the PATH environment variable.
3. Run the following command to move the index: stsadm -o osearch -propagationlocation e:\search

Restart the Search Service for both the index and the query server. The search service can be restarted from Central Administration by going to the Operations tab and then "Services on Server".