I have used Frontpage to back up team sites. It works well for me.

Mindsharp's Daniel Webster did an article for Windows IT Pro on
SharePoint Backup and Recovery:
www.windowsitpro.com/.../49794.html

This article was pretty decent (i used this in helping)..

Way outdated though.. I would take it with grain of salt and try the latest versions of each product. The product versions reviewed in this article have been revamped (some multiple times) with newer versions and functionality.

One of the problems with writing is the lead time which frequently makes the articles stale, if not out of date, by the time they are published.

AvePoint was close to releasing their new version while I was finishing the article but the magazine would only permit comparing released products.

Short version, somewhat updated:

Variables to consider:

- What backup  solution do you have for the server operating system? And does it have a plug-in that recognizes SharePoint’s uniqueness? How granular is the restoration process for that backup solution? For instance, Backup Exec version that I examined could do a complete disaster recovery very well but could not restore individual items, lists, libraries, sites, etc. CommVault’s product could do both but would be expensive for a small shop and certainly overkill if you had already purchased a product to manage server backups.

- How big is your installation in database size and in number of servers, applications, site collections. There seemed to be no consistency in pricing. Some were per server, some per site collection or content database, etc.

- DocAve and SPDR were very user friendly, granular, and browser-based management. Disadvantage was that while they were great for all the SharePoint pieces, you still needed the IIS metabase and the custom files on the file system backed up by some other process. Still, the SharePoint admin could manage them without needing Network Admin or Server admin rights, which is another advantage for many shops.

I found comparing the products somewhat difficult because it was apples and oranges and bananas but fortunately, no lemons.

Also, I want to throw a question to the group. I heard that there may not be a "Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 Products and Technologies Resource Kit" from MS. Is this true??

Please say its not so... I use the 2003 Resource Kit so much I had to buy another copy recently because my old copy became to "note-ridden" and "dog-eared" and started to fall apart... It's the best resource I have.

Will there be a "paper" Resource kit for MOSS??

Resource kit will be available on web............

AvePoint’s DocAve and SPDR have new versions since my article and have new features and capabilities.

You still need to backup  the IIS metabase and file system since their product is dealing with SharePoint databases only.

If you use IIS backup tool, be sure to use a password so that the backup can be restored to a different server, if needed.

I still think that Veritas backup  Exec is the best bet for the money - handles SharePoint and file system in one backup job, and can restore all in the same restore job. It even works to restore SQL2000 database files to SQL2005 making the move to a SQL2005 backend very easy!

Problem is that if a user deletes a sub-site of a big site collection or lists, items you need to restore the entire database to get them back.

Also, how does it handle the user who deletes a web-part or highly customized view from their site? This alone forced us to go with a supplementary product in our DR plans...

We use Veritas only for FS, SystemState, 60 hive, SQL Dbs. We also use their sharepoint  agent (which is similar to spsbackup)

Are you saying that it now does doc level restores and list item restores ?

Very expensive but excellent

They have a downloadable trial – allows you to backup  single documents, sites, lists, backup a list and restore to another list

Everything you could want really

I had a client that used BackupExec, very successfully. It was very painless to add files structures, databases, etc to the backup  plan and was amazingly painless to restore via SQL2000 and SQL2005. As most companies do some sort of customization to their installations, the ability to backup the /60 hive, IIS metadata, and other supporting file structures becomes very painless with BackupExec. I'm sure there are others (no shameless plug for this particular vendor) but BackupExec is the only one I've seen in action.

Writing their disaster recovery plan was made very simple by having this tool at my disposal.

I use AvePoint DocAve 4.0. (http://www.avepoint.com)

Excellent product.. top notch...(gives you site collection, site-level, item-level abilities, plus full DR - all full fidelity)

Guaranteed to give you the most "sleep-filled" nights than any other product I have seen. (and I evaled about 6 others before deciding on DocAve).

I also supplement DocAve with custom applications and scripts that I wrote as well as Veritas NetBackup (Local F/S, Win, SysState, SQL Agent, SPS Agent)

Just jumping on the bandwagon, here. We use DocAve and Veritas for
our backup  solution and have had great success with it.

Have you tried Front Page 2003 or its successor Designer 7? I back
everything up using Front Page 2003 and from the looks of it it back
everything up including the subsites.

FrontPage does not do a "full fidelity" backup. The biggest thing it doesn't
get are permissions or alerts, although there are other things it misses too.