Dear all, I have a postgresql database. "du -ks /var/lib/pgsql/data" gives me the following disk usage 45592808 /var/lib/pgsql/data (about 44G) But after I did a pg_dump, the dump file only has the size of 5.9 G. Thank you for your kind reply and comments. -- Chuming Chen System Administrator NHLBI Proteomics Center Medical University of South Carolina 135 Cannon Street, Suite 303 Charleston SC 29425 Tel: 843-792-1555 (O) Fax: 843-876-1126