Good Article it presented an often-missed backup option that I was unaware off and will now remember in the future.

Based on the article contents, follow up discussion, and books online, I've concluded COPY ONLY backups are principally used for creating database backup's that may or may not be accessible in the future, such as sending a backup to another company. This is extremely important for databases setup for FULL Recovery.

Your statement " The reactionary solution is to set databases to "Simple" recovery and accept the risk of database corruption. The reactionary solution is to set databases to "Simple" recovery and accept the risk of database corruption." Confused me because I do not see how it risks corruption. It does break the chain of log backups, which enable a database to be restored to a point in time. So far "Knock on Wood" we have had few issues with database corruption. Most unexpected outages have started up without issue. Yes, there was one time we did have an issue but still did not loose any data. However, we mostly use “Full Recovery” to help in fixing any erroneous updates from an application or an individual who will remain nameless. 😀