backup includes files outside wordpress folder

I, too, am having this problem, among other things (like timing out).

Not sure. But my suggestion is to use the plugin for database only backup. Backuping files of a website can be a cpu intensive process which may consume much memory and cause time out error.

For files backup, you may use File Manager (of cPanel) to compress the the main folder to a zip file. I thinks it’s usually better, I never fail even I compress hundreds of MB files using File Manager.

You can re-define the root directory that BackUpWordPress backs up from by defining the root path in your wp-config.php

define( 'HMBKP_ROOT', '/a/path' );

Sorry, I guess I do not know the correct way to enter the root path as I get a server error when I try adding define( ‘HMBKP_ROOT, ‘/a/path’) into the wp-config.php file. If the WordPress files, including the wp-config.php file, I want to backup are in installed in a subdirectory xxx located such as public_html/xxx, what should I enter for ‘/a/path’ ?
Thanks for a great plugin.

It looks like you missed the closing single quote after 'HMBKP_ROOT.

You would need to enter the following:

define( 'HMBKP_ROOT', dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/xxx' );

Tom, thank you.
define( ‘HMBKP_ROOT’, dirname( __FILE__ )); got me into the correct directory to backup. I was using the wrong path previously. Apparently, when the WordPress files to backup are located in a sub-directory of the hosting account root(public_html), but WordPress is configured to run from the domain name assigned to the hosting account root, define( ‘HMBKP_ROOT’, dirname( __FILE__ )); is needed.