SQL Server 2008 Backup Compression Standard Edition

Backup Compression is not supported on SQL 2008 Express, Workgroup, or Standard editions, only on Enterprise. There is no way to turn this on without upgrading your version to Enterprise.

Although you can't backup with compression on those versions, you can RESTORE from compressed backups.

See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb964719.aspx for more info.

I realize this is an old post, but just to throw this out there since it showed as one of the first few entries on a Google search - with SQL Server 2008 R2, Standard Edition also gets backup compression. More information here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb964719.aspx