How often should you back up?

Backup frequency depends on how much data loss you can afford if something goes wrong.

The usual rules are:

1. Critical databases (finance, orders, customers), backed up daily or even hourly (incrementally).
2. Medium-sized production databases, a daily full backup, plus intermediate incremental ones every 4-6 hours.
3. Test or rarely used databases, a weekly backup is enough.

It's also important to:

• keep several copies (e.g. covering the last 7 days);
• store at least one backup off the server (in the cloud or on another device).

Summary: you need to back up often enough that, in case of a failure, the data loss stays minimal and acceptable for your project.