# Prepare an individual partitions backup

For preparing partial backups, the procedure is analogous to restoring
individual tables. Apply the logs and use xtrabackup --export:

```{.bash data-prompt="$"}
$ xtrabackup --apply-log --export /mnt/backup/2012-08-28_10-29-09
```

You may see warnings in the output about tables that do not exist. This happens
because *InnoDB*-based engines stores its data dictionary inside the tablespace
files. *xtrabackup* removes the missing tables (those that haven’t been selected in the partial
backup) from the data dictionary in order to avoid future warnings or errors.

The next step is  to [restore]() the backup.