How to choose the type of restore operation to perform

You should consider your reasons for performing a restore operation so that you can decide what type of restore operation to perform: point-in-time or up-to-the-minute restore operation.

When to use an up-to-the-minute restore operation

You want to play forward all the transactions up to the most current time.
You want to restore individual databases.
You want to restore backup copies after a point-in-time restore operation of a backup copy that is not the most recent.
You want to perform an up-to-the-minute restore operation from any backup copy, including the most recent backup copy after a point-in-time restore operation of the most recent backup operation.
You might lose all transactions that occurred between the time when you created the last backup copy and when you performed the point-in-time restore operation.

Note: For to an up-to-the-minute restore operation to succeed, a contiguous set of all required transaction logs must be in the SnapInfo folder and the transaction log directory of the Storage Group.

When to use a point-in-time restore operation

You want to recover the databases as they were at a particular point in time: example, when the most recent backup copy was created.
You want to restore databases to a Recovery Storage Group or to a Recovery Database.
You want to restore all existing backup copies after a point-in-time restoration of a backup that is not the most recent one.