How to duplicate MSSQL database on the same or another server?

Solution 1:

1. backup the database
2. restore the database under a new name and/or on another server

Both these operations can be performed from Enterprise Manager (SQL2000) or its replacement SQL Management Studio (SQL2005+), or the TSQL commands BACKUP and RESTORE.

Note: you can restore a database backed up from SQL2000 on SQL2005 with not issues in most cases, but not the other way around.

Solution 2:

Adding this as I stumbled upon this while following the steps above.
In SQL Server 2008 R2 at least you can skip a step for getting a backup local to the server.

1. Right Click Databases
2. Click Restore Database..
3. Set the From database option to the database you are copying
4. Set the To database option to the new name
5. Click OK

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Solution 3:

Probably this is the best solution:

1) On Source DB Server - Create backup to local file

DECLARE @fileName nvarchar(400);
DECLARE @DB_Name nvarchar(50);

SET @DB_Name = 'NameOfSourceDatabase'
SET @fileName = 'c:\Test\original.bak'

BACKUP DATABASE @DB_Name TO DISK = @fileName

2) Copy the Source File to Destination Server.
If both servers are on the same machine, you might want to create a copy of that file:

EXEC master.dbo.xp_cmdshell 'COPY c:\Test\original.bak   c:\Test\clone.bak'

3) On Destination DB Server: Restore the database from backup file

RESTORE DATABASE CloneDB

FROM DISK='c:\Test\clone.bak'