_old postfix tables in my smf database - can we delete

[Sudhakar Arjunan]

Dear Team,

I was regularly trying to clean up my forum, Earlier there would be 14,000 users online every day. But now a days we get hardly 400 users per day. So am in the processing of cleaning bigger mods and cleaning up database tables.

1) removed backup_ tables and the forum is working fine.
2) can i remove tables with post fix _old in my database ex ,

smf_down_comment_old
smf_down_custom_field_old
smf_down_custom_field_data_old
smf_down_groupquota_old
smf_down_userquota_old
smf_log_packages_old
smf_login_security_log
smf_tags_log_old

i have similar table without _old also, so can i delete only tables ending _old to avoid some server load.

3) also give me any suggestions to reduce the forum load. Like delete personal messages , un read post, new replies to your post for all users. So we could free up some memory.

Thanks in advance.

[Illori]

_old is not something SMF adds to tables. so most likely you added it or maybe your host. if your SMF install does not use those tables, they dont use up any additional memory or server load as they are not in use.

[Sudhakar Arjunan]

To my knowledge, i have not added neither my host because i use a dedicated box for 6 years now. So they dont come in to my server by any chance.

Also how do i know, what smf uses and not ? If so i could find and delete all unwanted tables lying in my database.

218 tables with 2.53 gb content in it.

[Kindred]

well, first and foremost - unless you have a TON of FILLED tables that are continually getting accessed, deleting tables is not going to change "server load" (and if they are getting accessed, then they would not be appropriate for deletion)

SMF does not add "old" to tables as Illori said.   "to your knowledge..." --  well, someone/something, other than SMF scripts, added those tables.

As for what tables smf uses...   you could make a clean install of smf in a different database and compare the lists...  but don't forget, mods add tables as well, so don't just go randomly dropping tables just because they are not part of the basic smf installation.