# Some tablespace understanding

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/some-tablespace-understanding/201>\
**Category:** Other MySQL® Questions\
**Created:** [February 14, 2007, 10:23am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/some-tablespace-understanding/201 "2007-02-14T10:23:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![newtomysql](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a183cd/32.png) [@newtomysql](https://forums.percona.com/u/newtomysql)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2007, 10:23am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/some-tablespace-understanding/201/1 "2007-02-14T10:23:41Z")

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Dear All,  
I am new to innodb. So I am curios to learn about innodb tablespace. Ok now I look into my my.ini and find this line innodb\_data\_file\_path=ibdata1:10485760:autoextend. So it means I have ibdata1 file of size 10MB rite. So once my ibdata1 goes beyong 10MB what exactly happens ? I dont understand what does it mean by file size limitationt to 4GB. How can I monitor that my ibdata is reaching 4GB and how to overcome this problem. I really wanna get a good understanding of innodb as I plan to use it for huge data and not get into some crash and errors. Hope someone can shed some light to me. Thanks is advance.

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**Author:** ![Peter](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/peter/32/2_2.png) [@Peter](https://forums.percona.com/u/Peter)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2007, 12:28pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/some-tablespace-understanding/201/2 "2007-02-14T12:28:33Z")

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Quite Simple,

This means tablespace is 10GB initial and will growth automatically as needed.

4GB file size limit does not exist on most operation systems for years now.

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**Author:** ![newtomysql](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a183cd/32.png) [@newtomysql](https://forums.percona.com/u/newtomysql)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2007, 6:55pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/some-tablespace-understanding/201/3 "2007-02-14T18:55:39Z")

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Dear Peter,  
Thanks but then why most articles are speaking of this limitations. Does xp or red hat have this limitations ? Another thing is that how will I know wat is exactly my size of my ibdata1 as I am adding on data. This why I am asking is that if it overflow my current hard disk then I would need another hard disk to join rite ? How to do that ya ?