Re: How to (temporary) disable one partition in the partitioned table

[Mattias Jonsson]

in 5.6 you can do 'ALTER TABLE t EXCHANGE PARTITION p_to_disable WITH TABLE t_empty', which will switch the empty table t_empty to p_to_disable, effectively making that partition empty (you can then switch it back later...).
You can also use SELECT * from t PARTITION (p_all_but_one) to avoid using a specific partition (also usable in INSERT/UPDATE/LOAD/DELETE).

If you want to simulate a failure, then you can move the partitions data/index files as Rick suggests.