7.6.1.3. Using Symbolic Links for Databases on Windows
Symbolic links are enabled by default for all Windows servers.
This enables you to put a database directory on a different
disk by setting up a symbolic link to it. This is similar to
the way that database symbolic links work on Unix, although
the procedure for setting up the link is different. If you do
not need symbolic links, you can disable them using the
--skip-symbolic-links option.
On Windows, you create a symbolic link to a MySQL database by
creating a file in the data directory that contains the path
to the destination directory. The file should be named
db_name.symdb_name is the database name.
Suppose that the MySQL data directory is
C:\mysql\data and you want to have
database foo located at
D:\data\foo. Set up a symlink using this
procedure
Make sure that the D:\data\foo
directory exists by creating it if necessary. If you
already have a database directory named
foo in the data directory, you should
move it to D:\data. Otherwise, the
symbolic link will be ineffective. To avoid problems, make
sure that the server is not running when you move the
database directory.
Create a text file
C:\mysql\data\foo.sym that contains
the pathname D:\data\foo\.
After this, all tables created in the database
foo are created in
D:\data\foo. Note that the
symbolic link is not used if a directory with the same name as
the database exists in the MySQL data directory.
