My forum db is quite big and often times out when I try to dl it from phymyadmin and phpymyadmin is my only method seeing as I intend to use bigdump to restore the backup to another db on my server
Do it via SSH. vBulletin has a nice step-by-step article on how to do it, which you can tweak to work for any forum. http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/main/moving_servers
Do you have CPanel, IPanel or VDeck? CPanel and VDeck I know offer a backups option where you can generate/download and restore an sql backup.
You could also download it from phpmyadmin in parts, I've had to resort to that, works fine, takes a little longer.
Check this database backup script. It might be useful, I use it to backup all the databases in my server.
Doing the backup in parts from php my admin takes way too long, none of my servers have under 300 tables....... most of them approach 400+ And if you use php nuke platinum DO NOT use the advanced backups from the admin panel they don't work, this was stated by the designer of plat itself!