Backing Up and Restoring Drupal

Protect Your Data and Installation

Protecting Drupal data is slightly more complicated than a locally stored, static-file website, since all the data is stored in a database. Therefore the key to backing up your data is to backup the database. Here I outline a process that works for me. I do not make any guarantees as to the correctness of this information nor will I be held responsible for any problems you encounter as a result of its use.

My System

This worked for my system setup, but it may not work for yours, therefore I am listing my specs. At the time of this writing I was running 4.7.2, mySQL 4.0.27-standard, PHP 4.4.2, and phpMyAdmin 2.6.4-pl2.

Backing Up Your Drupal Database

• Open phpMyAdmin
• Select Your Database
• Click Export
• Under Export Click "Select All" and Select "SQL"
• Under SQL Options
  • Important: Different hosting providers use different versions of mySQL. If you are backup up a database from one host and importing it to another, make sure to match up the mySQL versions under the "SQL compatibility mode" drop-down. For example, if you are backing up a mySQL DB in a hosting environment running mySQL 4.1, and importing it into a 4.0 environment, you will need to select "MYSQL40" from the drop-down (it defaults to "NONE"). You can check your mySQL (and PHP) versions when you first log into your admin interface (ie. in cpanel on the left-hand side).
  • Select Structure, Add DROP TABLE, Add IF NO EXISTS, Add AUTO_INCREMENT VALUE and Enclose table and field names with backquotes.
  • Select Data, Complete inserts, Extended inserts and Use hexadecimal for binary fields.
• Select Save as file
• In File name template: _DB_your db goes here. (Here you can use any name you want)
• In Compression specify your choice (compression recommended for large-sized files).
• Click Go.

Restoring Your Drupal Database

• Open phpMyAdmin
• Select Your Database
• Click Import (or SQL if you don't see an import tab in your environment)
• Browse to the location of your Drupal database backup file.
• In Compression Select the option you chose to export the database (or "autodetect").
• In "format of imported file" select the SQL version that matches the SQL version running on the host you exported the database from.
• Click Go. You should see a message to the effect that "x number of queries were executed successfully."