How do I add default values to a database table using hook_install()? I am creating a custom module with its own schema of a few tables. These tables need to have some values pre-populated into them for the module to work (default locations, select options, etc).

What's the best practices way to insert default values into these tables during hook_install?

Since drupal_write_record is not available, I can use db_query, but I just want to make sure that I'm not breaking any cardinal rules by doing so.
The better way is to do it inside hook_enable(); at the time the hook is invoked, the module is already installed, and the schema of its database is available to Drupal, and to drupal_write_record(). As the hook is invoked all times a module is enabled, and not just when the module is installed, the hook implementation should check if it didn't added those database rows already (e.g., it should use a Drupal variable containing a boolean value).

As example of module that uses hook_enable() for a similar purpose, you can check forum_enable(), or php_enable() (which adds the "PHP code" input format).

function php_enable() {
  $format_exists = (bool) db_query_range('SELECT 1 FROM {filter_format} WHERE name = :name', 0, 1, array(':name' =&gt; 'PHP code'))-&gt;fetchField();
  // Add a PHP code text format, if it does not exist. Do this only for the
  // first install (or if the format has been manually deleted) as there is no
  // reliable method to identify the format in an uninstall hook or in
  // subsequent clean installs.
  if (!$format_exists) {
    $php_format = array(
      'format' =&gt; 'php_code', 
      'name' =&gt; 'PHP code',
      // 'Plain text' format is installed with a weight of 10 by default. Use a
      // higher weight here to ensure that this format will not be the default
      // format for anyone. 
      'weight' =&gt; 11, 
      'filters' =&gt; array(
        // Enable the PHP evaluator filter.
        'php_code' =&gt; array(
          'weight' =&gt; 0, 
          'status' =&gt; 1,
        ),
      ),
    );
    $php_format = (object) $php_format;
    filter_format_save($php_format);

    drupal_set_message(t('A &lt;a href="@php-code"&gt;PHP code&lt;/a&gt; text format has been created.', array('@php-code' =&gt; url('admin/config/content/formats/' . $php_format-&gt;format))));
  }
}


As shown from those hook implementations, the code could necessarily need to be executed all times the hook is executed; it could also be the code needs to just executed once, as in the case the default values added to the database cannot be altered from the user, who doesn't have a user interface to alter/delete those values.