I've been using the Idera SQLsafe product for a about 18 months. I run it on 80 SQL servers. I particularly like the ease of use, from a central console session...

Since you are looking for SQL backup products that compress data, take a look at Idera's SQLsafe as well.

http://www.idera.com

I've installed SP4 on about 60 SQL servers with no ill-effects. You need to be carefull about the order of installing if you have replication (publishers/distributors first).

There is also a nice little GUI package available free from SQLDTS.com called 'DTS Backup 2000 UI' that's pretty handy. It can copy all DTS packages from one server to...

I installed SP4 on 3 or 4 servers with no change in the sysadmin role.

Also, you have almost a 2 minute stoppage of I/O. That's a LONG time.

So your server uses internal disk? Does this happen every day? At the same timeframe? Are there any SQL jobs or scheduled tasks running then?

We get that also when we EMC frame tools to create an SRDF to copy to our disaster site. Do you have an EMC frame for your data disk(s).

Sorry, you're SOL.