I'm a backup fanatic and not having a few backups of files makes me uneasy. Today I had a little scare where I couldn't find a few of my databases when viewing PHPmyAdmin through MAMP. Turns out sometimes MAMP likes to sometimes grab the databases from the MAMP Pro location and sometimes the MAMP location.

So, I decided it was time to figure out how to automatically backup my databases. The problem is that my MySQL databases are not in the same folder as my Dropbox folder.

The answer to this is very simple! First, if you haven't already, sign up for dropbox. Then we just need to create a simple symlink that will allow the databases to be stored in their location and still be backed up to the DropBox folder.

First, figure out where MAMP stores your databases. If you are on good old MAMP, they will be located at /Applications/MAMP/db/ and if you are on MAMP Pro, they are located at /Library/Application Support/appsolute/MAMP PRO/db/mysql/

Next, pop open terminal so we can create our symlink. We will be using the link folders command (ln) and the -s argument to specify that its a symbolic link.

ln -s  /Applications/MAMP/db/ ~/Dropbox/symlinks/db

If your dropbox folder is different, make sure to change the last argument. Other than that, you're setup. No more database loss nightmares!