title: Where does mysql store data?
body: <p>Where does mysql store data? I found out (by using mysql>SELECT @@datadir ) that it's in var/lib/mysql - but that can't be it. I have a quite big database (4 GB) called 'bot', but all the files in the 'bot' subdirectory (var/lib/mysql/bot) have only 280KB. Where is the rest?</p>
  
  <p>One more thing - 99% of the database's size is a text column in one of the tables - I know that mysql stores it in separate files, but does it create one file per record?</p>
  
  <p>I found a big file in the var/lib/mysql directory named ibdata1 - its size is over 8GB - what is it? (btw, there are other databases as well in the var/lib/mysql directory).</p>