I make backups on a daily and weekly basis, and I archive them by confirming the latest backup to work on my localhost, then I remove the oldest backup I have. This way I have a backup directory with the last one, and one from a few days before and a week old. Just to be sure. I archive them by making dirs for each web site and tag the file:

databasename_vbversion_date_file.sql.tgz

i use phpmybackup to do and ftp the archives to another host i have

I was wondering if you have a tutorial for creating the backups and making install file

Yes, there is.

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/backing-up-database

Hope it help.

Thanks for the link Schucz !!

I back up mine daily:
I add the date to each backup & download all backups to my machine.

Deleting backups that are over 2 months old, & keeping a backup of 1 month behind always.

Alan

Usually twice a week I do this. First I close the forum and then using backup in cPanel I download a home directory backup, which is a .tar.gz file about 7 MB, and then I download the database which is like 4 MB and is a .gz file. It takes about three minutes total time for the process.

Everynight via a cron job :)

I do it via a cron job.

It checks to see how busy the server is, if off peak it will back up the databases I want and name them as so:

dbname_time_date.sql

I have one of my buddies who dose alot of site work with me fetch the backup's daily via his broadband, I download the latest one once a week on my 56k when im asleep.