Database backups

[Security]

Well, not really a security issue per se - but I just got burned on another issue of backups.

I had a forum hosted with a company in the US, but wanted to move the forum to the UK.

So I backed up, closed the account, and tried to move.

Only there were some problems - to cut a long story short, it wasn't until 8 days later I was in a position to be able to upload the backed up database.

Only, guess what? It hadn't compressed correctly when backed up, for some reason.

And, my nearest backup before then was as old as a month.

There was a big rush to move and so I certainly closed the old account too early. Bad move. Would have cost just a couple of quid to keep it running for a couple of weeks.

Also - when doing really important backups, it's worth considering downloading actual SQL files, rather than compressed - .gzipped or whatever.

So - you live and learn.