### 7.3.2 Using Backups for Recovery

 Now, suppose that we have a catastrophic unexpected exit on Wednesday at 8 a.m. that requires recovery from backups. To recover, first we restore the last full backup we have (the one from Sunday 1 p.m.). The full backup file is just a set of SQL statements, so restoring it is very easy:

```
$> mysql < backup_sunday_1_PM.sql
```

 At this point, the data is restored to its state as of Sunday 1 p.m.. To restore the changes made since then, we must use the incremental backups; that is, the `gbichot2-bin.000007` and `gbichot2-bin.000008` binary log files. Fetch the files if necessary from where they were backed up, and then process their contents like this:

```
$> mysqlbinlog gbichot2-bin.000007 gbichot2-bin.000008 | mysql
```

 We now have recovered the data to its state as of Tuesday 1 p.m., but still are missing the changes from that date to the date of the crash. To not lose them, we would have needed to have the MySQL server store its MySQL binary logs into a safe location (RAID disks, SAN, ...) different from the place where it stores its data files, so that these logs were not on the destroyed disk. (That is, we can start the server with a [`--log-bin`](replication-options-binary-log.html#option_mysqld_log-bin) option that specifies a location on a different physical device from the one on which the data directory resides. That way, the logs are safe even if the device containing the directory is lost.) If we had done this, we would have the `gbichot2-bin.000009` file (and any subsequent files) at hand, and we could apply them using [**mysqlbinlog**](mysqlbinlog.html) and [**mysql**](mysql.html) to restore the most recent data changes with no loss up to the moment of the crash:

```
$> mysqlbinlog gbichot2-bin.000009 ... | mysql
```

 For more information about using [**mysqlbinlog**](mysqlbinlog.html) to process binary log files, see [Section 7.5, “Point-in-Time (Incremental) Recovery”](point-in-time-recovery.html).

