Generally, backup is something you need to breathe, not just use, if you are in this business. It's the number one security tool. Having a fresh and usable backup can be a life saver in a number of situations, not only when your site is hacked, but on a great number of other situation, beginning from human error (accidentally deleted key parts of site - or just forgot to pay your hosting bill) to situations out of your control, as a hardware/software failure. And is essential to have an easy to use tool to move your site around - from local development environment to live hosting, or from one server to another. Enter Akeeba Backup (former Joomla Pack), a must have tool for any Joomla webmaster.
The best features of this tool are:
- Multiple backup/archive formats: JPA and ZIP
- One click backup: files, database and restoration script.
- Automatic configuration: Use the configuration wizard and let it do everything.
- Automatic backups: This can be done by configuring the Akeeba Backup Lazy Scheduling system plugin.
- Multiple backup profiles: its very flexible feature that is configured only once and used repeatedly.
- Files/Database Exclusion: determine exactly which files/directories or tables you don't want to include in the backup.
- Mailed backups: you can set up an e-mail address the backups to be sent automatically. You don't need to move your backup manually to another server for increased security.
You can find the complete features by visiting this comparison page.
It is a life saver extension, a must for wide range of users, whether you are a beginner or a guru, you will find it an excellent tool to help in the management of your website. Even if it's good to master other solutions to make a backup (via hosting control panel, FTP, phpMyAdmin, etc.) and move your site around, the easiness and comodity is unbeatable. Some of the advanced features are not for free, but the free version is sufficient in most cases. but you might want to buy the pro version for at least two reasons:
- Worths every penny you pay for
- You support the further development of this tool
Where you can get it? You can find it easily, but here is the link to Akeeba backup core download page for today 
. The latest version of Akeeba backup core (while writing this is 3.4.0) is compatible with Joomla 1.5, Joomla 1.7 and Joomla 2.5
