How to make a better backup

Question

I backuped my website with Backup and Migrate. I made some tests and restored a few times successfully.

Then I created some fields (one of them is named field_date), and made some tests; I was not satisfied so I restored again.

Then I wanted to create a field named field_date, which should not be in the database after restore to previous state, but I got the following error message:

DatabaseSchemaObjectExistsException: Table field_data_field_date already exists in DatabaseSchema->createTable() (line 630 of /var/www/includes/database/schema.inc).

How is this possible? None of my backups works to turn the site to the initial state. Is this bug in the module I used for the backup, or is this feature and I should use more reliable backup utility?

Answer 1

When restoring, you first need to drop your old database (or all tables within). The restore can only replace the tables that existed when you created the export, it doesn't know about any tables that you created later on.