I can back my database up via Infopop Threads and via a command line mysqldump.<br />Problem is when I try to use PhpMyAdmin, it hangs if I include the messages table in the backup. Otherwise, it works fine. Any suggestions?

When you say hangs? Do you get errors - or does the browser just freeze up?<br /><br />Have you tried optimizing or repairing that table to see if that fixes the problem.<br /><br />

How large is your posttable? Perhaps it is just taking awhile to backup. I would definately try optimizing and/or repairing the table as Josh suggested.

It times out and I get a page not found error.

A few thousand posts. I optimized and repaired. I'll keep trying.

This won't work if you sserver is in safe mode. But in the config file for phpMyadmin there is a max execuation time. Usually this is at 300 by default. Set this to 0 to turn the limit off. However if your server is in safe mode - this won't have any effect. But it's worth a try. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

2.52 is supposed to do a better job of exporting large tables, let's cross our fingers as I've had the same problem <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I recently upgraded from 2.5.0 to 2.5.1, and it looks like the capability to export to a local file was added, by specifying a value for $cfg['SaveDir'] in config.inc.php.<br />