Backup and restore

I had the task to move all courses/students from one site to another. The source site has Moodle 1.9.4+ (Build: 20090225), and the target site has Moodle 1.9.9+ (Build: 20100728).

With most courses the backup (and restore) process went fine; however, there were two courses in which the backup process froze, each and every time I tried (I cannot do anything at server level —like modifying php.ini and restarting the server— as I don't have access to it).

The next two screenshots show the backup settings I used and how the process froze and ended without any message:

My first attempt (which I named, "vertical" division backup) was to make two backups for each course:

1. one in which I unmarked all the "user data" (right column from top section), and selected "no" to "user files" and "grade histories" (from the bottom section) —from what I understand, this will save only the course material:

   course-only data:
   Left column: everything On / Right column: everything Off
   Users: Course 
   Logs: No 
   User Files: No 
   Course files: Yes 
   Site files: Yes 
   Grade histories: No
   

   

2. another in which I unmarked all the includes from the left column, and selected "no" to "course files" and "site files", and "yes" to "user files" and "grade histories" —I assume this will backup only user info/data/grades:

   user-only data:
   Left column: everything Off / Right column: everything On
   Users: Course 
   Logs: No 
   User Files: Yes 
   Course files: No 
   Site files: No 
   Grade histories: Yes
   

   

With these settings, both backup processes finished succesfully. But alas! After I restored them (the "course-only" one as a new course, and the "user-only" one as added to an existing course), and went to check the user's grades, none of them had any, their grades weren't there. Everything else seems to be Ok, except for the grades (I haven't checked other areas, to be true, but the course structure, material, groups and participants are there).

I must mention that at this point, I tried the CSV import procedure (where I mapped both, the email AND the grade entries) and a "grade-histories only" backup/restore, but eventhough both, the CSV and the XML (from the backup) files, had the grades in them, the users continued to appear without their grades.

As I began to think that this "vertical" (course/user) division was missing something, I decided to do a "horizontal" division backup:

1. for the first backup I selected both columns (activities AND user data), but only for four (tasks, forums, lessons, resources) of the five top sections available.

2. for the second backup I did the same for the remaing section (questionaires).

In both cases I selected "yes" for all options (except for "registers") at the bottom section.

My surprise came when I saw the file size of the backups:

Frame #2 shows the zip files I got from the "vertical" division ("course-only" and "user-only"), and frame #1 shows the zips from the "horizontal" division. Quite a difference! But I don't understand why. Evidently, after I restored the first two zips, all participants had their grades.

My problem is that I still have one course which freezes during a "questionaries only" backup, so I'm stuck.

My questions are, why does the "vertical" procedure doesn't include whatever it has to include? Or how should I set the options in order to complete the backup procedure and have everything in the zips?

I think there should be a document that explains in more detail how the different backup settings affect what is to be backed-up and restored, though I haven't found it

Thanks to all in advance,

Guillermo