Having been in IT for 20+ years and being the one on several jobs telling the client 'hey you know those backups you've been doing, well they are no good' when it comes to the crunch. I have learnt through bitter experience that full backups are the only way, it does not matter if we are talking about Windows, SQL Server, Exchange full backups are the only way, forget clever agents, forget incremental or differential (slightly better than incremental backups) backups as you are relying on more than a single source of data to get the thing running again. Don't rely on a single technology e.g. tape, do backups to file too. Always use the built in backup procedures and dont get fancy e.g. ntbackup, backup built into SQL server. Dont do what I have seen some other companies do backup SQL server to a file on the same server, always backup to another location (different server, maybe different location). Testing backups through restores is the only way to know that your backup solution will get you back up and running in the event of an error. It is funny how when you test a backup solution through restoring the data how many times you say 'I forgot I needed x to get this to work', service packs are something a lot of people forget about it is important to note what service pack level a program is at when doing a restore especially in the event of total loss of hardware.