Backups produced with any 3.x version of MySQL Enterprise Backup can be restored using any higher MySQL Enterprise Backup version.

Backups produced with MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.8 can be restored using MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.7 or 3.6 using the normal restore procedure. To restore a MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.8 backup using MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.5, copy the files and directories from the datadir subdirectory of the backup into the main backup directory. MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.5 expects the files to restore to be at the top level of the backup directory.