Hey everyone, I have a CMS at the moment which handles large amounts of files. Unfortnately I had to have a server reload the other day and I only have a backup left to restore it with. The backup is a .sql file and I have ghone onto the mySQL control panel on my server and imported the files but for some reason it didn't recover anything at all really.

Is there any advise someone can offer me on this?

what message did the console gave you ?

Hi gramham,

Yep we need the message the console gave you when it did the import... also what is the file size of your .sql file? Take a look and let us know - its possible the backup only backed up structure, not data.

All the best.

open up the sql in a text editor and see if there is data as well as structure in there

Humm... if your database still exists, the .sql script must destroy it before all (drop database statement).
Using .sql script as backup is more a developement way to export it from a development server toward a test or production server. An efficient back up must be done using file system.

An efficient back up must be done using file system.

Not every databases are file system based, like MySql.

Many don't support "hot backup", and use an dump utility which create a sql script file.
Nothing bad with that, you just have to know what you are doing.

1) It could have been an old backup with only the table structure.

2) mysqldump backups up to and sql file. PhpMyAdmin also can.

3) To do a filesystem backup with MySQL you would stop the database server unless you explicitly lock the tables.

4) There is a mysqlhotbackup utility for MyISAM hot backups. Also innobackup for InnoDB also backups up MyISAM tables.