The database is the heart and soul of your store, it is recommended that you backup your Zen Cart database every so often (depending on how heavy your activity is). Because if that database gets corrupted due to software bugs, hardware failures, hackers, or server crashes you would loose all your product information, customer information, and transaction data. Typically, you would have to use your webhost's backup utility or phpMyAdmin to backup your ZenCart database but the mayority of Zen Cart store owners don't know how to do that, it never gets done.