Question : Backing up SharePoint Services 3.0

I can't find a real, clear definite Best Practice for backing up SharePoint Services 3.0 for disaster recovery.  I was wondering if anyone has a good procedure to backup the settings and documents. My research has found conflicting recommendations. I was wondering how others were backing this up.

The SPS 3.0 is on a 2003 Server and SQL DB 2005. (if you have anything for an MSDE installation, that would be helpful also as I might need to have that backed up as well)

Answer : Backing up SharePoint Services 3.0

Here is what we are doing (best practice or not, I am not sure)

Every night a script runs and dumps all our site collections to disk via STSADM -o backup
Then Our backup software backsup the app server (incl these files) to tape.  This allows us to do site collection level restore if needed.  We generally will restore to our test server and let the user pull what they needed.
Our backup software also backs up the SQL DBs (via Veritas SQL Agent)

While our current process works decently, it is not granular enough for me.  We are in the process of implementing Veritas SharePoint agent, which will backup the entire farm each night and allow for restores all the way down to the item level.