Moving an InnoDB-based DB to another system. (1 reply)

I have a rather large InnoDB-based database (several tens of millions of records) on a system of mine at work and I would like to have a copy of this DB on my laptop for development and testing purposes. I want to avoid the hassle of dumping the DB content into ASCII files and re-loading it to the MYSQL instance on the laptop. So, I was thinking of copying the entire 'ibdata1' file from the source engine to the laptop (after stopping both the MYSQL instances on both systems). Would that do the trick? Will the databases of the original system re-appear in the target system after copying the 'ibdata1' file or should I create empty equivalents of these databases on the target system before copying the 'ibdata1' file?

Thanks in advance for any feedback,
Panos Tsapralis.