To initiate the restore process, you run the mysqlbackup command with the copy-back subcommand. The MySQL server must be shut down during the restore process. You can restore all the data for a MySQL server -- multiple databases, each containing multiple tables. Or, you can restore selected databases, tables, or both.

To repair a problem such as data corruption, you restore the data back to its original location on the original server machine. You might restore to a different server machine or a different location to set up a new replication slave with the data from a master server, or to clone a database for reporting purposes.

See Chapter 5, Recovering or Restoring a Database for instructions on restore techniques.