Restoring SBS 2003

OMG, restoring a crashed SBS 2003 that was in service for 4 years has been like replacing not just the house that burned down, but the furniture, fixtures, photos, and family heirlooms. Better backup and preparation would have helped, as would prior experience. If it wasn't for Google, I would have been dead in the water. I've done almost as many searches in the past 5 days as I did in the entire last month.

I've been backing up the System State, Exchange storage groups, the users' Shared Documents folders (to which I've directed their Home Folders), and all 3rd party application data.

What did I learn?

• Use a script or special application to back up Sharepoint.
• NTBackup does a great job backing up just about everything else.
  
• Don't restore ANYTHING until you've finished setting up the SBS and every last one of it's components - even if the customer is badgering you to do so.
• Set up a clean, working server with no users, groups, or policies, but with all components in place.

Once these conditions have been met, and only then, can you begin restoring users, data, Exchange stores, and the Sharepoint databases, and do them in that order.