… periodically b.big tables that are affected by fragmentation can be arranged as 1 file per filesystem c. recently Mysql 5.1… disk for historical data (less used). Index files are the most prone to fragmentation – since 1 record inserted/updated can trigger updates… is immune to fragmentation unfortunately, the only way to reduce it is to have some table options that will pre-allocate space in…

… have updates you may be suffering from internal fragmentation in addition to file system fragmentation – such as rows may get more than one… to be in different locations etc. Good you agree on pre allocation option though I think even much smaller values such as…