I didn't use the zp-backup function and have some older db-backups.
Witch tables I can play back without getting trouble by possible security restrictions?
All or only images and albums? Or just some columns of both tables?
Anybody has some experience or suggestions?
I made something like database-refresh but nothing serious on my view ...
After anyhow my installation lost and mixed data:
110 img have no titles and description anymore, only their filename
and some of this img-datasets have now new id and album-ID's.
Even some album ID's changed.
The sort ist gone and some 100 imgs are unpublished.
Even one title is swaped ...
all imgs have exif-data inside, but I add & update this data from the backend for sure.
Never made the metadata-update because then my added data are gone,
because they where not written into the imgs, I think ...
thanx for help,
v 1.4.14

courageously I replace all tables and - zp is running again.
thanx so far

Since I don't know what you did or what happened. Zenphoto's gallery (albums) is file system based. The database mirrors this and not vice versa as on other systems. So if you remove an image or album via ftp, the next visit to the front oder backend will remove it from the database. This also means you loose all data entered manually. Same happens if you directly change folder or file names.

So if you delete database tables like albums or images on purpose or accidentally, running setup will create all require tables again. Naturally all albums and images would be considered "new". So all data entered manually is lost.

The information about moving installations generally:
http://www.zenphoto.org/news/moving-and-changing-existing-installations/

Also read on the user guide for example here:
http://www.zenphoto.org/news/caching/