>The advantage of something like Backup Exec with an agent is that you can have a single backup mechanism for SQL Server and the rest of the files on the server.

I'm not following you there. The backup within SQL Server is more of a single backup mechanism than when you use Backup Exec (which is certainly an added component). Don't get me wrong - I've primarily used BE as backup software for a general backups. However, I don't see its feature for being able to backup live mdf and ldf files as being necessary or that big a deal, which was what your comment seemed to be at odds with.