Okay, no one seems to take my A word of advice :
Do the file/folder backup in parts using bzip instead of gzip.
#1. First use bzip for compression instead of zip/gzip for better compression.
On windows, this type of file can be handled by winrar.
#2. Secondly, do the compression/backup in PARTS.
For example, if have really large public_html say 100 MB(large?), divide them(mentally) in say 4 parts, thereby bringing down the size of each the compressed file,which is to be downloaded.
Assuming, a 100MB directory gets compressed to 50MB.(full_backup.bzip)
Now, if you do your backup in parts(4 parts here), one can assume, the file sizes of "in parts" method would be 50/4 MB = 12.5 MB.
/parent_dir/ = 100MB
/parent_dir/dir1 = 25 MB
/parent_dir/dir2 = 30 MB
/parent_dir/dir3 = 20 MB
/parent_dir/dir4 = 25 MB
part1.bzip + part2.bzip + part3.bzip + part4.bzip = full_backup.bzip
4x 12.5 MB = 50 MB
Obviously, a 12.5 MB(but you have to download 4 times - different files) download is far better than a 50 MB download at one go.
You can also use FTP to download those backups of yours.
Also, public_html and www are same folder, so don't back them up twice.
Hope this sorts out your problem.
