MySQL InnoDB not releasing disk space after deleting data rows from table

mysql innodb delete-row
Sumit Deo picture Sumit Deo · Aug 13, 2009 · Viewed 145.1k times · Source

I have one MySQL table using the InnoDB storage engine; it contains about 2M data rows. When I deleted data rows from the table, it did not release allocated disk space. Nor did the size of the ibdata1 file reduce after running the optimize table command.

Is there any way to reclaim disk space from MySQL?

I am in a bad situation; this application is running in about 50 different locations and now problem of low disk space is appearing at almost all of them.

Answer

Leonel Martins picture Leonel Martins · Aug 15, 2009

MySQL doesn't reduce the size of ibdata1. Ever. Even if you use optimize table to free the space used from deleted records, it will reuse it later.

An alternative is to configure the server to use innodb_file_per_table, but this will require a backup, drop database and restore. The positive side is that the .ibd file for the table is reduced after an optimize table.

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