Restoring a Site Collection - Approaches

Question

There is only one site collection in a web app in production farm. I've to create a similar site collection in a new web application. What are the disadvantages or technical challenges that I can possibly face if I go with below approaches?

1. Backup restore of site collection.
2. Backup Content DB and restore it on the new web app.

Please feel free to suggest any other approaches.

PS: I know that both the above approaches are easy and can save lot of my time instead of manual creating or using tools to copy the content, but want to be aware of the risks.

Answer 1

1. backup / restore of the site collection is the best option, all the times it works.
2. DB backup and restore approach will not work in this case as you already has the same content database and Site Collection id part of the farm. In order to restore the DB to 2nd web application then you have to go through a long process(resotore it to another farm, change the ID of Conttent DB, attach to that farm, take a backup then restore back to your original farm) which is mentioned here.Copy of same content database running on two web applications