Server Upgrade Gone Bad
 

So I've just learned the harsh realities of how a simple server upgrade can go so badly that its not even funny. Long story short, my server had to be completely restored, which left me in a wonderful predicament where I had no backup and thousands of angry users wondering what happened to their site.

So the line below should be familiar to anyone who has done mysql dump's before
mysqldump --opt -u nqforum_dab -p nqforum_user > /home/nqforum/current.sql

This is my normal line I'd use for a mysqldump. I changed the actual names of the user and database for privacy, but still you get what I'm saying. So my question if its even possible if I have my old hard drive mounted to my new one. The directory would be let's say

/mnt/olddrive/

And I have all the files I'd ever need in there. What kind of SSH command can I do to retrieve that mysql database that I'm searching for just so I can back it up somewhere on the server, download it, upload it, and then run the mysql ssh command to restore it. The big problem I'm having right now is when running any kind of mysql command, the mysql I have right now is reading from my new server not the slave hard drive I'm having. Any help would be appreciated.

whats the old drive mounted as, whats mount say?

Try this line

mysqldump --opt -Q -u dbusername -p databasename > /path/to/backupname.sql

To locate the backup file on the old drive (think this i the question inside your long ;) story) you can use the following command (assuming you are on Linux):

find /mnt/olddrive/ -name current.sql