An overview of creating geodatabases

There are three primary ways that you create geodatabases in ArcGIS:

1. Design and create a new, empty geodatabase (and subsequently define the schema and load datasets into it).
2. Copy and modify an existing geodatabase schema (and subsequently load datasets into the copied geodatabase).
3. Create a copy of both the schema and contents from an existing geodatabase.

Before proceeding with geodatabase creation, you should read about the following:

• Designing geodatabases
• Defining the properties of a geodatabase