Cannot Restore Database Backup

[PostAlmostAnything]

Hi,

When deleting all Wordpress posts before a specific post I accidentally deleted a bunch of categories, so I need to restore the database from the backup I made right before I did that. Problem is when I upload the backup I get the error:

Error: SyntaxError: Unexpected token '<', "<!DOCTYPE "... is not valid JSON

I tried uploading it in phpMyAdmin and got an error also which says:

phpMyAdmin - Error
Incorrect format parameter


I tried uploading it as a 600mb .sql.gz just as I downloaded it, extracting the 4GB .sql file and uploading it directly uncompressed, and compressing it to a .sql.zip but none of it works.

 

[PostAlmostAnything]

Now it looks like my backup was uploaded but as a new database with no privileged user.

 

[kodeslogic]

Let the current DB be as it is, create a new database and try to restore the backup to the new database, if it restores successfully then you can just change the database connection details in your code.

 

[cPRex]

I like that idea from @kodeslogic - that would let you see if the issue is with the backup or the database you're trying to import things to.