A. Kretschmer wrote:
buy external USB-Drive, and create a new tablespace, and move some large table into this new tablespace and/or use the new tablespace for new tables. You can also use table-partitioning with different tablespaces.
There are zero USB drives on the market I'd trust to put a database on. That interface was not designed with things like the proper write caching controls needed for reliable operation.
There are some eSATA ones that might be useful for this purpose. Those are essentially no different than directly connecting a drive. Note that you have to be concerned about redundancy when you start doing this sort of thing. External drives are more fragile than internal ones--there's a reason why the warranties are usually much shorter.
As for the original question here, I would look for tables that might have lots of dead space on them (located via VACUUM VERBOSE or pg_stat_user_tables) and run CLUSTER on them to try and reclaim some space, *before* you run out completely. Once space is extremely limited, it becomes dramatically more difficult to reclaim it using that approach.
-- Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US Baltimore, MD PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.2ndQuadrant.us -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
