Question

Which files are the actual files holding the data in the tables in a mysql db?

I went to /var/lib/mysql/ and I can see there a bunch of relatively small directories corresponding to my tables, and a lot of files named servername-bin.0000001 etc.

Is the data stored in those files?

Answer 1

It is installation specific, but if you’ve /var/lib/mysql , then:

• MyISAM tables will be stored in individual files in /var/lib/mysql/databasename/
• InnoDB resides in /var/lib/mysql/ibdata (unless you’ve used the innodb_per_table setting, in which case it’s stored much like for MyISAM tables)