Backup and restore

There's a whole series of articles in the Moodle docs,
- http://docs.moodle.org/19/en/Hacking_the_Moodle_2.0_database_transfer_script_to_convert_a_Moodle_1.9_site
- http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Hacking_the_Moodle_2.0_database_transfer_script_to_convert_a_Moodle_1.9_site
...
- http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Hacking_the_Moodle_2.0_database_transfer_script_to_convert_a_Moodle_1.9_site

I wonder whether that method would help in difficult upgrade problems.