This topic pertains to XAMPP for Windows. What I particularly like about XAMPP for Windows Portable is that I can implement a new version of XAMPP without making any changes to existing instances of XAMPP. As a result, I do have multiple version of XAMPP installed and available to run on my testing computers. Recently, while trying to run XAMPP Version 7.4.33 I've started to encounter frequent instances where MySQL cannot be started. Since most if NOT all of the websites I'm testing use MySQL databases this has the affect of making none of the websites installed on an instance of XAMPP accessible. BTW, just another reason why portable versions of XAMPP are so good.
For whatever reason, it might be worth offering that the error messages displayed by the XAMPP Control Panel when this happens are shown in the following.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ic5jmk4jdod19v/MySQLerrorStarting.jpg?dl=0
While I'd love to know what is causing the problem, especially if it is something I'm doing which can be prevented, I'm thinking that backup/recovery would be a big help in diminishing the severity of the problem. One idea is to make frequent copies (likely zip archives) of the MySQL portion of XAMPP. This hinges on the idea that the entire content of the MySQL folder could be replaced with a current backup without causing significant problems. In that, the database processing is entirely contained in the MySQL folder.
Note: Wordpress is a primary component of many of my websites, which depends heavily on SQL databases which in this case are managed by MariaDB rather than MySQL.
Therefore, is the idea of being able to separately backup and restore the content of the MySQL folder good or bad?