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I am wondering how this is possible. At my host, I have a Mysql folder that is 17 Gig big (du told me) , however I have only 20Gig, but df and the admin panel say's I still have 16Gig Free. How is this possible? Does anyone know?

Thank you

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I know that linux can sometimes overallocate memory (Put simply, it pretends to allocate it until you use it.) I wonder if it perhaps does the same with disk space. – izb Oct 23 '09 at 8:59
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My guess would be that your files are actually sparse files.

It means that you actually have only ~4GBs of data in your folder, but MySQL allocated 17GB without filling it.

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As well as the sparse files possibility, it is not uncommon for shared hosts to separate database space from other disk quota either intentionally (some charge extra for database space) or accidentally (by virtue of the way their filesystems are laid out and their quota checking scripts/configuration are set up).

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