DB Size Doesn't Decrease After Dropping Tables

[Dan F]

Hi,

Our database keeps expanding in size, even though I keep deleting tables, and we're now out of disk space. Might anyone offer a suggestion?

I often do analysis by creating scratch tables. However, after I drop these tables, the DB size doesn't decrease. The existing tables should take 10-15GB in size (e.g., if they were exported as CSV files, they would be 10-15GB). However, the database plus a couple indexes are now 50GB.

For reference, we're using MySQL 5.0; the tables are InnoDB; and I'm using the default installation with only one change in the config file (I set "innodb_locks_unsafe_for_binlog=1" instead of to 0).

Any suggestions would really be appreciated, as we're almost out of disk space.

Thanks so much,

Dan