Easy way to mass delete 300.000 Postings?

[klempau]

Hi!

We are re-structring our board at the moment. Because of this we have to delete about 300.000 postings unequally distributed into 30 Forums with up to 80.000 Postings per forum.

Is there a fast, easy and safe way to mass delete them? We´ve tried to delete a categorie and a main forum, but after waiting about 4 hours since we´ve pressed the delete button, we´ve aborted the process.

Thanks for your help!

[Floris]

What kind of threads are they? A few different users? All the posts in a forum? ..

[klempau]

Hi Floris,

About 300.000 postings distributed into about 30 forums and sub-forum, posted by about 15.000 different users. Actually we´ve moved all forums which have to be delete as sub-forums into a one forum.

What kind of threads are they? A few different users? All the posts in a forum? ..

[Floris]

And it also times out when you delete on a per subforum?

[klempau]

Hi!

yes and no. We´ve tried it two times. The first time it timed out. Then I gave mySQL more RAM etc and tried it a second time. After 4 hours we´ve aborted the process and restored a previous backup. I don´t want to risk a corrupted database . Is it really safe to have that delete-process running that long?