he main issue with the built-in tool is that it doesn’t allow restoring to an existing portal and force you delete the portal first.
Yes, this has caused us to stop using SPS Data B/R for server level B/R and resort our own custom SQL scripts along with iisback for the metabase and xcopy for c:\inetpub. We're working to incorporate stsadm for single site B/R and something like AvePoint for single document B/R.
Re: We have written scripts to automate SQL restore from a production environment to a stand-by server
Are you use full backup/restores? ...or incremental? What is the size of your backups?