title: Best way to copy a database (SQL Server 2008)
body: <p>Dumb question - what's the best way to copy instances in an environment where I want to refresh a development server with instances from a production server?  </p>
  
  <p>I've done backup-restore, but I've heard detach-copy-attach and one guy even told me he would just copy the datafiles between the filesystems....</p>
  
  <p>Are these the three (or two, the last one sounds kind of suspect) accepted methods?  </p>
  
  <p>My understanding is that the second method is faster but requires downtime on the source because of the detach aspect.</p>
  
  <p>Also, in this situation (wanting an exact copy of production on a dev server) what's the accepted practice for transferring logins,etc.?  Should I just backup and restore the user databases + master + msdb?</p>