When I first started working with Sharepoint 2007 I was frustrated having to use Central Administration to perform backups.  I personally prefer the command line.  I wanted a way to quickly perform farm backups and individual site backups without starting up Central Admin.  Fortunately stsadm.exe and Powershell came to my rescue.  Below are two functions that I first made to perform farm and site backups. 

Steps to use the scripts

1. Add C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin added to your path .
2. Add these scripts to profile file in Powershell.
3. Create a shared directory for the backups. Make sure you have same permissions on the share as you would if backing up through Central Admin. This folder is basically a hot folder for instant backups.

$HotFolder = "E:\Backup\HotBackup\" + (Get-Date).dayofweek + "\"

function SpFarmBackup
{   
    if (Test-Path $HotFolder)
    {
        Remove-Item $HotFolder -recurse
        New-Item $HotFolder -type directory
    }
    else
    {
    New-Item $HotFolder -type directory
    }
$cmd = "stsadm -o backup -backupmethod full -directory " + $HotFolder + " -overwrite"
& cmd /c $cmd   

}

function SpWebBackup ( $SiteName, $FileName)
{
    $Backup = $HotFolder + $FileName + ".bak"
    $cmd = "stsadm -o export -url " + """$SiteName""" + " -includeusersecurity -filename " + """$Backup""" + " -overwrite"
    cmd /c $cmd
}

In my next post I will show you a more robust backup solution for Sharepoint with Powershell.