David:

I use PKZip (actually PKZip25 command line) to do backups. I have one database which I run through to get names of tables, then construct text file with list of these names and also the name of the database e.g.

TABLE1.*
TABLE2.*
...
...
DATBASE.*

and use this as the input to the PKZip command lane (@TEXTFILE)

I zip up to the same disk/directory as the data, and also to diskette(s); but you could redirect.

For restoring, I parse the Zip file, present user with list of file names (you could modify this to give "friendly" names) and user can choose one or many files to restore.

The source can be disk or diskette. I also keep 3 generations of backup on disk, and restore can be from any one.

Need to watch for - No other users while backing up / restoring.

Does this help?

Mike