MySQL .frm recovery

I had problems with my hard driver that caused my MySQL tables to be inaccessible.  I was getting “#1033 – Incorrect information in file” error.  I checked the files if there where obvious anomalies on the file caused by cross-linked file pointers but the files looked ok.

I had just reinstalled my MySQL due to the corruption and didn’t realize that this database was using InnoDB.  I thought it was enough to backup and restore the database directory as that would be enough for MyISAM databases.  Later I tried copying the InnoDB files from the data directory of the old installation.  It didn’t work at first until I re-started my computer.  The database was recovered after that (structure and data).