Thanks for the reply opc. I had briefly thought about something like you suggested but figured the replication method would be faster (less downtime) as it should only require a quick restart of the sql server rather than moving files over manually first and running code to get things back online (there are about a dozen DBs). Although I suppose I could have everything scripted for all databases, and ready to run with a single button press, after moving the tail files.

You mentioned potential problems with consistency at the cutover time with the replication method, can you explain what you mean by that please?