Alexander Staubo <alex@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > You could count the disk space usage of the actual stored tuples, > though this will necessarily be inexact: > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/diskusage.html > Or you could count the size of the physical database files (/var/lib/ > postgresql or wherever). While these would be estimates, you could at > least guarantee that the dump would not *exceed* the esimtate. You could guarantee no such thing; consider compression of TOAST values. Even for uncompressed data, datatypes such as int and float can easily print as more bytes than they occupy on-disk. Given all the non-data overhead involved (eg for indexes), it's probably unlikely that a text dump would exceed the "du" size of the database, but it's far from "guaranteed". regards, tom lane
