Mysql – Fast copy/rename database, not thesqldump

Take these some points in your consideration they may help you in case of generating the dump and restoring it.

1. Use Extended inserts in dumps.
2. Dump with --tab format so you can use mysqlimport, which is faster than mysql < dumpfile.
3. Import with multiple threads, one for each table.
4. Use a different database engine if possible. importing into a heavily transactional engine like innodb is awfully slow. Inserting into a non-transactional engine like MyISAM is much much faster.
5. Turn off foreign key checks and turn on auto-commit.
6. If you are importing to innodb the single most effective thing you can do is to put innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 2 in your my.cnf, temporarily while the import is running. you can put it back to 1 if you need ACID

Give it a try..

Taking a backup from a slave is exactly how I do it, and it works very well. I can't imagine a better way to take a backup without causing downtime of the master and your application.

I am intrigued by your statement about not being able to restore a backup onto a mac osx machine (this could probably be a different question). An alternative is to setup a virtual machine on your local mac machines that run the same OS your production servers run. A tool that makes managing those machines easy is Vagrant.

Mimicking the production environment has the added benefit of allowing you to test any restore procedure with a fairly high degree of certainty that it would work on the production servers should you need to.