CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I use the MySQL Gui Tools (available here: http://mysql.com/products/tools/). I have found them to be absolutely invaluable. Query Browser makes browsing, manipulating, querying, etc. my tables a very easy process. Administrator is what is used for backup and restore. You can create projects, and it has scheduling ability (though I haven't used this). One note -- the backup created through Administrator cannot be later imported through Phpmyadmin. You have to use Administrator for both backup and restore/import. One reason I like this tool over Phpmyadmin is that when importing/restoring, you have the ability to import to a different schema. This is useful if you are moving the database from one server to another, such as from a local installation to a live hosting environment, where the database name is different. You also can backup multiple databases as part of a single backup process.

I've been using phpmyadmin to backup.  I'm not sure why the backup menu choice in civicrm does not work for me - looking into that.  For large databases a routine like bigdump or similar may be necessary to reload the files without exceeding your time limit (mine is 30 seconds of server time - I think).