Can I move MySQL table to a second drive?

Question

I am having I/O related performance problems that would be solved if a few relatively small tables were running on a SSD. I can't move the entire DB to SSD because it is much too large.

I thought this was possible (map specific tables to different drives) but a tech at my managed hosting company says that the entire DB needs to be in a single directory. Is this correct? If he's wrong, can someone point me somewhere with basic instructions on how this is done? Or even provide the instructions here?

Answer 1

When you create a MySQL table you can specify the data directory and index directory. Have a look at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/create-table.html

So, to answer your question, you could create a new table in the different directory and migrate your data there.