"Backing up the files of a SQL database while it's active is not a good way to back the database up."

If you're referring to the tape backups, those are done at 3:00 am when users are off the system. We are not a 24/7 shop (fortunately!)

Thanks so much for the response. If I schedule a one-time maintenance job to shrink the database and then rebuild indexes, does that sound reasonable?

I really appreciate the information on these forums; it's probably the best training I'm going to find anywhere. BOL is a great resource, but it doesn't cover many of the real-world problems I'm finding that keep me awake at night.