Backup of Massive MySQL InnoDB Databse

[Ian Cunningham]

I'm currently running a site with a huge 20GB InnoDB MySQL database on Windows 2003/IIS. My method of backup is to simply stop the MySQL service and make a copy of the "data" directory. However, this results in downtime and isn't easily automated.

Does anyone have a better solution so that I could make a constant backup whilst live? I can't afford the InnoDB live backup tool, but there must be other ways around it?

[txbakers]

I use something called PeerSync which can read open files for backup. It's about 98% accurate as far as I can tell. The best result is to shut down and copy, but the PeerSync has worked for me.

Then, once the copy is made, I don't have to shut down to take it off site.

[Ian Cunningham]

Have you tried this for really large DB's before?

[txbakers]

not that big