Backup MySQL after inactivity I currently backup daily which I think is fine, however, I want to backup more frequently when there's no activity (e.g., after X minutes of no INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE excluding SELECT).

I'm currently thinking of creating a custom script that will check for CHECKSUM TABLE mytable and see if that changes, every X minutes.

Is this a good idea or is there a better way, perhaps an existing tool?
If you set up Replication, you can lose the entire server, yet recover everything except anything that was "in progress" when the disaster hit.

That is, the Slave is always nearly an up-to-the-second copy of the Master.  No backups, no locks, no reload, etc.

Then, if you like, you can "continually" backup the slave.  It won't impact the Master and all the activity there.

If your fear is that something will be deleted, then needs to be recovered, see CHANGE MASTER TO ... MASTER_DELAY ....