How to optimize a 9 GB table if there is very little free disk space?

Question

I have a 9 GB myisam table on a 12 GB disk with 5 MB of free space. How to optimize table?

The problem is that optimize works by copying the entire table to a new file, so for this I need 9 GB of free space.

The only solution I can come up with is

• stop the entry in the table,
• Logically back up the table to another machine.
• delete table
• recreate the table by restoring it from a backup on another computer.

And in the future I have to limit the size of the table to less than the available free space.

Am I answering my question or is there a better solution? Thanks.

Answer 1

Drop indexes and restore them manually or on demand. This also applies to the OPTIMIZE operation.