Situation: You have a primary database server and a secondary one, and an additional server (the target server) where you want to make a copy. The primary log-ships to the secondary. You need to make a fast copy of a large database from the primary server on the target server, without causing any downtime. If you restore a copy of the database from a full backup, there are a few problems: - If you don't have a recent full backup, you need to make one, which takes a while. - When restoring from a backup, SQL server first writes the entire file's size with zeroes, then restores the data. This means it takes twice the length of time needed to copy a file the size of the backup. If you need to first copy the backup somewhere, then it takes 3 times that length. - You could turn on "instant file initialization" on the target server to make the backup restore much faster, but there are security concerns (Windows does not properly support sparse files, so old disk data will magically become part of the new file). Ideally, you would be able to stop the SQL Server service on the secondary server and just copy its database files (the ones maintained by the log shipping target). However, files that were in a "restoring..." state cannot be reattached (SQL Server will refuse). You can reattach a "restoring..." .mdf file (that you copied from a log shipping target server) like this: (from http://mikedefehr.com/2010/08/31/how-to-attach-a-database-in-standby/) on the target server, create a new blank database with the same number and kinds of files as the source database make a backup of this new database delete the new blank database restore the new blank database from the backup file, choosing "norecovery" option, so that the restored database will be in the "restoring..." state. stop the SQL Server service on the target server replace the blank database restoring files with the ones you copied from the log shipping target (secondary server). start the SQL Server service on the target server run this query on the target server to bring the copied database online: restore [database_name] with recovery