What is the best way to backup everything?

[AdamZ]

A simple question, but I'm not sure about the answer. What is the best way to backup 4+ years of entries, pictures, and, well, everything. My server has tools through CPanel and I have seen plugins that do backup. I'm wondering how you all manage your backups.

[Timbalu]

for the database is used commonly PhpMyAdmin.
There is also a backup plugin, but I am not sure it would really serve your needs.
The rest is done via zip / ftp or some *sync commands, depending on your OS.

[mdnava]

In case of s9y there are two types of data worth saving: database and uploads. In the case of the uploads much of the data (if not all) doesn't change at all, but new data keeps being uploaded. In this case you might use an incremental backup or just keep it uncompressed in a directory and keep saving new uploads every once in a while.

Always, always, keep individual backups of your database as it is the most important data you have. You may use Cpanel to backup everthing (or some things) every once in a while but you should always keep frequent backups of your database, as frequent as you treasure your data. If a complete lose of 6 months of data does not cause concern than you should backup every 6 months, if that's true for a week then backup every week. Troubles can always happen.

For the database you may use phpMyAdmin or Cpanel, just make sure the data is there.