Backup weblog questions (newbie)

I have attempted to get my webhostees to answer these questions but she has failed to reply to my request. I know that she is very busy and does not always have time to help me so I have taken it upon myself to get my questions answered.

I have recently switched blogging software and she helped me to backup my site by walking me through it in an IM. I hit the close button before I remembered that I had wanted to save the information for future use. In an effort to learn things I have taken every tutorial that smartftp offers and am familiar with the process of downloading my files to my desktop. To make sure that I have done it the right way I made another folder in which to back up my site just a few days ago. To make sure that I had the right files I checked them against the one she had walked me through.

I had done it successfully except for one thing. When I checked to see if I had my most recent journal entries that were made from the last backup, I realized that they weren't there. I don't understand why my newest entries (made sense switching blogware) were not apart of the backup. So, my question is how do I get them there? What is it that I need to learn to do? Do I need to upload them to the server and then perform the backup? If so, she did not walk me through that. And are there more tutorials that give more than a basic knowledge of the smartftp program that I can take?

Thank you for any and all replies.

~~Grace~~