MyBB Community Forums

Why is it that if I do a database back up through the ACP, it's a much smaller download (as in mb's downloaded) than if done through my cPanel?

Really? That's the opposite of when I do a backup through either. I only rely on the one through the ACP, since for some reason the other way cuts the backup in half.

That's weird! When I had my forums through IPB it was the same, downloading them through the cPanel was much bigger than through the forum ACP. I say much bigger, I just downloaded through both (bearing in mind my forum isn't that large) and there was a 1.5mb difference!

whene you generate your backup, save it in the backup folder, then download it vie FTP, then you will get your complete backup, the other option to download direct to your pc, sometime the download connection cut off, and your backup will not completed too.

Quote:whene you generate your backup, save it in the backup folder, then download it vie FTP

I didn't try that, I downloaded it directly to my computer. I can't understand why saving it to the backup folder would make it any different in size, plus in doing that means "extra work" involved, since you have to go through your FTP server to then download it onto your computer

saving it to your backup folder will not make any different in size, but it will make it more safe whene you download it, and it'll download completly, but saving it to your computer may not done completly becuase of any connecting cut!..

I always thought the idea was to save the database on your computer, what if you need to upload to another server?

I still don't understand why when downloading in both ways, one database is totally different in size, to the other.

The way that the backups are dumped may be different, for example, new phpMyAdmins by default use extended inserts (something like the following, I don't exactly remember the syntax):

INSERT INTO table (ID, col1, col2, col3) VALUES (1,1,2,3),(2,4,5,6),(3,7,8,9)

Other backups may use this instead:

INSERT INTO table (ID, col1, col2, col3) VALUES (1, 1, 2, 3);
INSERT INTO table (ID, col1, col2, col3) VALUES (2, 4, 5, 6);
INSERT INTO table (ID, col1, col2, col3) VALUES (3, 7, 8, 9);

Obviously the latter method will increase the filesize, but they are both dumping the same data.

Thanks for the explanation, Dennis.

It kinda got me concerned that if ever a backup was ever needed to restore a forum or moveto another server, one might not have enough info' required.

You should always open up your database backup after you've created one. Make sure at the end of the file you have the data for the last table of the database. Sometimes if you try to backup a large database, PHP may timeout and you may not get the entire dump in the backup.