by Emma Richardson.
In the automated course backups, it only backups courses so if your only course is failing, then I would guess that all courses will fail. I am not sure what you mean about site settings because course backups does not back up site settings...
I always feel better when I have course backups as well, I know that even if my whole site crashed and I couldn't bring it back for some reason or another, I could always rebuild and restore the courses.
I wonder if your permissions are correct on your backup folder? The temp folder is just that - where are you actually trying to back up to? Is anything created there?