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This looks like a simple and safe way of handling repeated MySQL backups.

Yeah, I use a similar approach. However, for ma.gnolia we are talking about a database reaching half a terabyte (unless I misunderstood), so my question was more like: what do you people consider the best way to approach database backup so that it's sustainable, scalable and the most disaster proof? Got any testimoniance (whether personal or of public companies), or case study?

I wonder how they managed to get to half a terabyte. Delicious's was smaller even for millions of users.

Yeah indeed... .5TB is huge for bookmarks (title, url, tags, description). I have never had the chance to build anything this big but if you imagine the amount of text you could fit in 500GB, it makes you wonder.

I gave a look at your comments and found this one which replies to my question perfectly (I didn't follow that thread, discovered it right now): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=459000 -- thank you for sharing your experience!

According to the write-up on Wired (http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/01/magnolia-suffer.html), Ma.gnolia also took a snapshot of the page being bookmarked. This may account for the size of the database.

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