Thanks for your reply. The third party toll is Backup Exec which is "SQL Aware". Whether that means it can perform restores with the NORECOVERY command to allow subsequent log restores I'm really not sure.

So yes plenty testing ahead!

I suppose another question at this point would be if I leave Backup Exec to do its snapshot business on the database does this have any impact on a standalone maintenance plan?

If I wanted to run my own Full SQL backup to a different location and pickup the logs as they are this should be ok right? It's not like we would be duplicating backups on the logs which would be a huge mistake.

Finally if I initiate a full backup, what state does the database go into - is it offline or do I need to manually kill any connections before doing the backup?