bkshilo, You are correct, if you need to get to the most recent point in time, only the last differential backup is needed, not each of the individual differential backups. In the circumstance I was faced with, we used differential backups as a means to perform pseudo log shipping. What I mean by this...

GLee, That is a reasonable question. Although Database Mirroring and Log Shipping independently are good high availability\disaster recovery techniques, they should not replace full backups. Full backups can be considered the last line of defense in order to prevent a catastrophic issue. As a point of...