The master database records all the system-level information for a SQL Server system. This includes instance-wide metadata such as logon accounts, endpoints, linked servers, and system configuration settings. Also, master is the database that records the existence of all other databases and the location of those database files and records the initialization information for SQL Server. Therefore, SQL Server cannot start if the master database is unavailable. In SQL Server 2005, system objects are no longer stored in the master database; instead, they are stored in the Resource database.