Thread:Project:Support desk/How to backup MySQL db using phpMyAdmin/reply (3)

This line should be in the dump file, which phpMyAdmin creates. Open it with a text editor and you will see that it is human-readable. It "only" contains the SQL commands, which are needed to create your tables and to put your content in them. Scroll to the very bottom of the file and check the last lines.

> However,I understand that using phpMyAdmin cannot handle large databases.

That is right. Reason are restrictions in the PHP settings on the server like the maximum execution time. If you have shell access on this servr, you can go around this problem by creating the dump on the shell. This works with the tool "mysqldump", e.g. like this: "mysqldump -u my-mysql-username -pmy-mysql-password -h my-mysql-host my-database > dump.sql".