Well most of us have previously been using BackWPup and zipping files just fine. I know he had support for both the pclzip and zlib libraries.
Final got a log, only in email, never saw anything on the screen. Here's an example:
Repeated 15 time before it stoped.
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup version 2.0.0, Copyright © 2011 Daniel Hüsken
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup job: 1. Marine aquarium backup; DB+FILE+OPTIMIZE+CHECK
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup cron: 0 3 * * *; Wed, 6 Jul 2011 22:00
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: PHP ver.: 5.2.14; litespeed; Linux
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: MySQL ver.: 5.0.91-community-log
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: curl ver.: 7.21.0; OpenSSL/0.9.8b
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: Temp folder is: /tmp/backwpup_8f00b204e9800998/
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: Backup file is: /home/marineaq/public_html/wp-content/backwpup-29d46/backwpup_0_2011-07-06_10-27-49.zip
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [ERROR] Step arborted has too many trys!!!
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup version 2.0.0, Copyright © 2011 Daniel Hüsken
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup job: 1. Marine aquarium backup; DB+FILE+OPTIMIZE+CHECK
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup cron: 0 3 * * *; Wed, 6 Jul 2011 22:00
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: PHP ver.: 5.2.14; litespeed; Linux
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: MySQL ver.: 5.0.91-community-log
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: curl ver.: 7.21.0; OpenSSL/0.9.8b
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: Temp folder is: /tmp/backwpup_8f00b204e9800998/
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: Backup file is: /home/marineaq/public_html/wp-content/backwpup-29d46/backwpup_0_2011-07-06_10-27-49.zip
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [ERROR] Step arborted has too many trys!!!
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup version 2.0.0, Copyright © 2011 Daniel Hüsken
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup job: 1. Marine aquarium backup; DB+FILE+OPTIMIZE+CHECK
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: BackWPup cron: 0 3 * * *; Wed, 6 Jul 2011 22:00
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: PHP ver.: 5.2.14; litespeed; Linux
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: MySQL ver.: 5.0.91-community-log
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: curl ver.: 7.21.0; OpenSSL/0.9.8b
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: Temp folder is: /tmp/backwpup_8f00b204e9800998/
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [INFO]: Backup file is: /home/marineaq/public_html/wp-content/backwpup-29d46/backwpup_0_2011-07-06_10-27-49.zip
2011-07-06 09:27.50: [ERROR] Step arborted has too many trys!!!