How can I backup a remote SQL Server database to a local drive?

Question

I need to copy a database from a remote server to a local one. I tried to use SQL Server Management Studio, but it only backs up to a drive on the remote server.

Som

Answer 1

I know this is late answer but I have to make a comment about most voted answer that says to use generate scripts option in SSMS.

Problem with that is this option doesn’t necessarily generate script in correct execution order because it doesn't take dependencies into account.

For small databases this is not an issue but for larger ones it certainly is because it requires to manually re-order that script. Try that on 500 object database ;)

Unfortunately in this case the only solution are third party tools.

I successfully used comparison tools from ApexSQL (Diff and Data Diff) for similar tasks but you can’t go wrong with any other already mentioned here, especially Red Gate.