I am not sure what your issue is here. * When you restore the database, the data (mdf) and log (ldf) files have be on disk someplace. The `WITH MOVE` just tells SQL where to put them. * You can't have a SQL server without databases, every install will have 4 databases out of the box, `master`, `msdb`, `mode` & `tembdb', they are system databases, and they each have mdf & ldf files someplace, just like the user database you want to restore. * As scsimon mentions in a comment, you probably do not want your SQL files on the C drive, best practice explained to me is for to have 4 drives for SQL, * Data Drive (mdf) * Log file drive (ldf) * Tempdb (mdf & ldf for tempdb) * Backups (bak & trn, which should be copied off at least nightly)