My preferred strategy has always been to make a nightly full backup and transaction log backups every 15 minutes, 24x7. Backup the system databases daily. I usually don’t bother with differential backups, since they do not support point in time recovery.

Depending on your space available, retain the full backups three or more days and the transaction log backup for at least three days. If possible, get the backup directories backed up to tape daily and rotated offsite for disaster recovery.

You can setup the backup maintenance plans to automate the whole thing for a server and be up and running it a few minutes.

If you are running a version of SQL Server that supports it, make sure you set all backups to be compressed to save time and space.

I used this strategy on an installation of over 300 SQL Servers with over 5000 databases and never had any problems with it.