Comparing Sharepoint backup and STSADM backup

Hi All,

I have been working with the Administration part of Sharepoint and have been through many issues while restoration of backup taken using both STSADM and Sharepoint Central Admin Backup.

Scenario 1:
If we use STSADM the disadv we would be facing is it would delete all the Task List Items where as if we go with Central Admin Backup restoration then it would restore the Task List Items too.

Scenario 2:
Where when there is a scenario of creating more than a single site or a series of operations to be done then I recomment going for STSADM and it would make our lifes easier rather than going for Central Admin Site.

Scenario 3:
We generally have scheduled backup going on the servers which you could do using STSADM but not using Central Admin Backup.
Backup a sitecollection
***********************

ECHO ON
SET SITECOLLURL="mysitecollectionurl"
SET FILENAME="mybackup.bak"
SET STSADM="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\bin\stsadm"
REM ----- Execute Site Collection Backup -----
%STSADM% -o backup -url %SITECOLLURL% -filename %FILENAME%
%STSADM% -o execadmsvcjobs
***********************


Restore a sitecollection
***********************
ECHO ON
SET SITECOLLURL="mysitecollectionurl"
SET FILENAME="mybackup.bak"
SET STSADM="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\bin\stsadm"
REM ----- Execute Site Collection Restore -----
%STSADM% -o restore -url %SITECOLLURL% -filename %FILENAME%
%STSADM% -o execadmsvcjobs
***********************
 
 
This could be setup as windows scheduler and run every Sunday at 12:00AM which would take a backup.