Most mysqlbackup operations, including those on single-file backups, write data or metadata to a designated directory referred to as the “backup directory” in this manual. See the description for --backup-dir for details on its usage for different operations.

Choose in advance for this directory a location on a file system with sufficient storage; it could even be remotely mounted from a different server. You specify the path to this directory with the --backup-dir option for many mysqlbackup commands.

If you use the backup directory as a location to store your backups, it is preferable to keep each backup within a timestamped subdirectory underneath the main backup directory. To make mysqlbackup create these subdirectories automatically, specify the --with-timestamp option each time you run mysqlbackup.