How to back up a mysql database to an external hard drive using ubuntu?

Question

What I want to do is attach an external hard drive to the server and then have the server run a cron job at the end of each day zipping the database and storing it on the external hard drive. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Copy the whole mysql directory to the disk.

Answer 2

The easiest way is to use phpmyadmin's export feature (look in synaptic package manager to download).  

If you don't want to do that, you can use the mysqldump command.  Here's a tutorial on that:

http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/MySQL/Bac...

Hope this helps.