Currently I'm using mysqldump to make backups which is slow, but OKish. The big problem is restoring database, which takes a few days. The dump is around 7GB gzipped, so it's not a tiny database, but it shouldn't be outside the range of reasonable with mysql.
So what are my other options? Something like mysqlhotcopy would be perfect.
Best Answer
Take a look at Percona's Xtrabackup, which allows hot backups and is totally free.