Hi guys, I often change my distro on a whim and just keep my home drive. In theory this should be enough to protect my database but I often like to 'rm -rf .kde/' to get a clean (working) desktop.

Does anyone know of a way to keep a backup database somewhere else on my system?

At the moment I only use SQlite, and whilst I got mysl working, I didn't use (or recognise) why it was any better than sqlite.

Should I switch?

if sqlite is working fine for you, and you're happy with performance, then there's really not reason to change.

You can keep a backup of your database by backing up the ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/ directory, as well as the ~/.kde/share/config/amarokrc file.
Note though, that when you install the various distros, your music volumes must be on the same mountpoints you used in the backup... otherwise your amarok will see your music as new, rather than from the existing db.