>And if it's not OK, how do I then best go about restoring a running
>database?

I'll read this as meaning 'How do I ascertain minimum down time when restoring?', not 'How can I overwrite my database without losing what is currently being modified?'

Simply restore your database to a new file, and then - when finished - shut down the original database, rename and bring the database online again. Less than ideal if you require true 24*7, but if your system may survive one minute offline (and that it is OK to put back an old copy rather than the latest data), then it should be OK.

Set