How can I find out the location of my (localdb) SQL Server 2012 database and back it up?

Question

I am using VS2012 and I have a database created:

(localdb)\\v11.0 (SQL Server 11.0.2100 - T61\\Alan)

How can I find out the physical location o

Answer 1

This PowerShell script, will give you the default location for localdb .mdf files:

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('Microsoft.SqlServer.SMO') | out-null
(New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server("(localdb)\$instancename")).DefaultFile

where $instancename is the name of the localdb instance you want to check for. You can get a list of localdb instances by running

sqllocaldb i