We have a production web and database server with SQL Server 2000. (However, a few clients they have their own servers with SQL 2005.) So we have local installs of SQL 2005 Express for development on Windows XP SP3 boxes (which don't allow SQL 2000 Enterprise installations).

We often need to copy SQL 2000 databases to SQL 2005 instances. In the past, we have used the SQL Publishing tool (also mentioned here). However, one of our databases is so big that using that tool fails as it creates SQL scripts that get too large for Management Studio to handle them properly. Besides, it takes too long... :)

We would use the Copy Database Wizard included with SQL 2005, but our development machines run SQL 2005 Express which don't included SQL Server Agent, which is required for Copy Database Wizard to work. So, I guess our solution will be to upgrade our development installs with the full version of SQL 2005 (we have an MSDN subscription of course).

I was wondering what other solutions, if any, work well for you guys? (Besides complaining to the bosses to upgrade our production servers to 2005 or even 2008--which I've already tried.)