Three things matter most overall. Database size and the type of disks you are using and whether o not your backupos go directly to tape or disk. First off, backups to disk are superior in speed than to tape. On the size question, if the database is 30 Gb or less then SQL maintenance plans are the way to go. Full backup daily and transaction log backups every 10-15 minutes (I've a similar 30 Gb database that can be recovered with 2/3 a day's transaction logs in a little less than an hour). Finally, disk type. By this I mean local disks or SAN disks. SAN didks are the way to go. So if your on a SAN then you can have the awesome restore time you need.