If you ensure that the disk I/O subsystem and CPUs are performing well, you ensure performance benefits to all SQL Server operations, including replication and backups. Transactional replication and transaction log backups read from transaction log files. Snapshot replication and backups perform serial scans of database files. The SQL Server 7.0 storage structures have made these operations fast and efficient, as long as there is no queuing occurring in the database server CPUs or disk subsystems. For more information, see SQL Server Books Online.