Newbie Backup Guidance

I’m using WordPress 2.3 as part of hosted web-site account. They do a daily backup. However, I’d like to backup frequently while I’m editing pages, theme files and so on.

I’m kind of an “advanced hobbyist” technically but this is a new environment and I’m having trouble getting oriented.

I’m reading the backup documentation and I’m just not getting a grip on what that’s all about. The hosting service says I don’t have direct access to phpMyAdmin, and I’m not sure that has anything to do with saving individual files and pages…

Maybe what I want is to be able to download pages and upload pages (and posts, and theme files…)

Any help with getting oriented to what my backup options are would be appreciated.

Thanks!