MySQL Installation Layout on Microsoft Windows mechanism used by the virus-scanning software, and the way in which MySQL rapidly updates different files, which may be identified as a potential security risk. After installing MySQL Server, it is recommended that you disable virus scanning on the main directory ( datadir ) used to store your MySQL table data. There is usually a system built into the virus-scanning software to enable specific directories to be ignored. In addition, by default, MySQL creates temporary files in the standard Windows temporary directory. To prevent the temporary files also being scanned, configure a separate temporary directory for MySQL temporary files and add this directory to the virus scanning exclusion list. To do this, add a configuration option for the  tmpdir  parameter to your  my.ini  configuration file. For more information, see Section 2.3.4.2, “Creating an Option File” . For MySQL 8.0 on Windows, the default installation directory is  C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0  for installations performed with MySQL Installer. If you use the ZIP archive method to install MySQL, you may prefer to install in  C:\mysql . However, the layout of the subdirectories remains the same. All of the files are located within this parent directory, using the structure shown in the following table. For MySQL 8.0, there are multiple installation package formats to choose from when installing MySQL on Windows. The package formats described in this section are: Program Database (PDB) files (with file name extension  pdb ) provide information for debugging your MySQL installation in the event of a problem. These files are included in ZIP Archive distributions (but not MSI distributions) of MySQL. •MySQL Installer •MySQL noinstall ZIP Archives •MySQL Docker Images 117 2.3.2 Choosing an Installation Package 2.3.1 MySQL Installation Layout on Microsoft Windows Table 2.4 Default MySQL Installation Layout for Microsoft Windows Directory Contents of Directory Notes bin mysqld  server, client and utility programs %PROGRAMDATA%\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0\ Log files, databases The Windows system variable %PROGRAMDATA%  defaults to  C: \ProgramData . docs Release documentation With MySQL Installer, use the Modify  operation to select this optional folder. include Include (header) files lib Libraries share Miscellaneous support files, including error messages, character set files, sample configuration files, SQL for database installation