Re: How to restore dates from ibdata1 and old dump.

[addision philip]

If you have copied the MySQL data directory from /var/lib/mysql to /path/to/new/dir, but only copy the database folders (i.e. mysql, wpdb, ecommerce, etc) AND you do have innodb tables, your innodb tables will show up in 'show tables' but queries on them (select and describe) will fail, with the error Mysql error: "table db.tableName doesn't exist". You'll see the .frm file in the db directory.

For innodb tables, it's important to copy over the ib* files like ibdata1, ib_logfile0, and ib_logfile1. Once you will have copied over, everything worked as expected.

If your my.cnf file contains "innodb_file_per_table" the .ibd file will be present in the db directory but you still need the ib* files.