"WITH REPLACE" Restore failing with same logical filenames Does using WITH REPLACE when the logical filenames match (to avoid using WITH MOVE) fail when the backup is from a different version of SQL?  I have a backup from SQL 2008 but when I attempted to restore it using WITH REPLACE on a SQL 2012 folder, despite the Logical filenames matching on the database backup and the database I'm replacing, it's failing giving me the 'directory lookup' error.
This is the answer I've found for why the file autolocation doesn't work in SQL 2012 for me.  I don't believe it has anything to do with the backup being from SQL 2008.


  In SQL Server 2012, during the restore of a full backup without MOVE clauses that indicate the target physical location of each file, on top of an existing database, the file autolocation algorithm requires: not only a logical name match between the file declared in the backupset and any given file in the existing database, but also their file GUID, file ID, and create LSN must match. If any of those attributes don’t match, the physical location used for that logical file is the one stored in the backupset. This additional requirement was implemented to fix this last scenario I just exposed which was considered a defect.


This was taken from this MSDN article: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ialonso/archive/2012/06/08/sql-server-changes-behavior-in-cases-where-file-autolocation-is-invoked-during-the-planning-phase-of-a-full-restore-with-replace-clause.aspx