That was what I was afraid of...

BTW, the snapshot takes about 8-9 hours, but a Baskup/Restore takes 2-3 hours, and that's after optimizing the snapshot using -UseInprocLoader and multiple BCP threads.

I've also considered doing a detach-->copy-->attach, this would only take about 2 hours. Also the snapshot is logged when it is applied, so you need a huge transaction log at the Subscriber to finish the snapshot.

All this said, I guess the only way to do it is during off-peak hours.

-Dan