mysqldump vs select into outfile

MySQL & MariaDB Other MySQL® Questions
1

Can someone explain the difference between mysqldump and select into outfile.
If im trying to dump all databases and tables for restore into a new server is one going to be faster then the other?

Thanks,
Will

2

mysqldump will give you entire SQL statements that can be piped into mysql. And with the correct arguments you will also get CREATE TABLE statements etc.
So a mysqldump can give you a full backup of your database.

Outfile will just give you a text file with delimited data, so the tables must already exist on the new server when you import the records.

If your dump file was created with the mysqldump --opt I’m actually not sure of which of the two ways is the fastest so you will have to try it and find out.