Is it possible to import a single mysql database directory?

Question

I am somewhat new to mysql. I created some databases recently and, to back them up, I just copied the folders with those database names in the mysql data directory (i.e containing only db.opt, .frm, and .ibd files). Unfortunately, my computer crashed. I now realize I did not back up the databases in the correct way (as I understand now, I should either have backed up the entire mysql data directory or used mysqldump). However, is there any way to recover the information from these data folders or is it lost?

Answer 1

OK, spurred on by RolandoMySQLDBA's comment (I didn't know what to look for earlier), I was able to solve this.

Ultimately, I used this blog post to recover the table data from the .frm files.

Then, I used the technique here to import the ibd data.