Mysql – Options for reducing size of a MySQL database

MySQL

I have a 88.9 GB MySQL 5.0 database sitting on a 90GB drive. The database contains a number of MyISAM tables for our (custom) system usage reporting. The data is date-based aggregations of what are essentially web server logs.

I thought about converting the big tables to the MERGE storage engine. The idea being that I could move the older data to a different drive. However, I've never done this before, and am a bit nervous about testing on my production database.

And, of course, I'm under a time crunch. I have to process all of last month's reporting data real soon. So installing a larger drive is not an option at the moment.

Does anyone have some advice or experience to share on reducing the size of this database?

Best Answer

Got any indexes you don't actually use?