there are couple of ways to move the production data into Dev. But before start you have to make sure.
- Source Farm and Dev Farm both should be on same Version(patch level). if you use the backup-spsite and restore-SPsite then it should be same level.
- But if you use the Content Database method then if destination level is higher it will work but if destination is lower version level then Prod then it will not.
- if your site collection depend upon some customization( solution etc), those should be present in the destination farm otherwise it will not work.
For moving the production site to dev
- Use the Backup-SpSite to backup production site then mvoe the .bak to Dev then use the restore-spsite on dev
- Use the Database SQL backup from Prod then restore the Back up to the Dev sql server. After that attach to the desired web application.
If you already restored the site collection before in the same web application then it will through the error.
- you can use the 3rd party tools to move the site between the farm.