website backup software or service

I am looking for a service or perhaps software I can run on my local machine that I can setup to automatically
backup all the website files (selectively), preferably to another hosted server but worst-case I suppose saving them to a local
machine could be workable. This needs to be able to operate reliably with little intervention, preferably by first creating the
entire backup and then syncronising it using only the data that has changed.

I have done file backups via ftp but found this very problematic and unreliable. Firstly it takes a long time
and requires a good continuous connection. But what's more troubling is that several times after having done
a backup of all my zen cart files I found later that some folders were empty, thus when I thought I had my
files backup up I actually didn't. I don't know if this was a failure of my FTP software (FTP Commander)
or what.

Also, I have several zencarts so backing them all up redundantly via ftp every time is just not practical
even if it was totally reliable.

Anyway, any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

This type of service is available but not cheap...
Doesn't your host backup?

Do you have a file set locally?
Do you make any additions/changes on the local first then FTP the file to your server?
If you do it this way - you always have a current file set locally
Then only need a daily DB backup

If provided with cPanel as your account manager, there should be a file & DB backup facility that downloads a tar'ed file set

Yes, my web hosts backup but I have been burned a couple times by server crashes where they could not restore all
the files and considerable rebuilding was needed with unacceptable downtime in between.

If I had only one website to look after it might be practical to just do as you suggest and do it all manually
but our company has several websites on different servers and 4 separate zen carts so that would just not
be a viable solution.

Yes you can create a site backup in cpanel but that is a very crude and inefficient way to do what I want because
it involves creating a redendant set of all the files each time.

-Correction - the cpanel for our main store does NOT have a backup facility to create a compressed site backup. I'm not sue why this
feature is not present. We have a 'virtual private server' on that account.

I have used CP Site Saver and it worked as advertised. I don't care much for the astroturf way it's marketed, and it's for CPanel and Windows only (Windows on your local computer, not the server) but it works. I think it's about $50.

If I had only one website to look after it might be practical to just do as you suggest and do it all manually but our company has several websites on different servers and 4 separate zen carts so that would just not be a viable solution.
I beg to argur here on this point because if a file change is made - - Someone has to be making it....
If in a corp enviro - - you can have the site local filesets on a shared drive where access can be controlled and the person making changes has access
Yes you can create a site backup in cpanel but that is a very crude and inefficient way to do what I want because it involves creating a redendant set of all the files each time.
Exactly, a complete compressed backup as of that date and you can roll these as you see fit(delete older ones)
-Correction - the cpanel for our main store does NOT have a backup facility to create a compressed site backup. I'm not sue why this feature is not present. We have a 'virtual private server' on that account.
You should have complete controll of a VPS and what is setup as services
As stated though there are services to do what you want and stevesh has provided his experience with one such provider...
Cost aside, there are several