Question : Backup Sharepoint search index

I'm verison 2003 and was wondering how to use SPSBACKUP to backup the search indexs. Are the search indexes even needed for recovery. I have backups of all the other DBs

Answer : Backup Sharepoint search index

Not sure the above applies to SPS2003.  

If the content you are indexing is less than 500 GB, I don't think backing up the index is worth it.  Just run a full crawl after restoring your farm, which will rebuild the index.