Current summary, with a bit of restating.
It turns out my system had gotten fairly confused during my upgrade last fall from 5.1 to 5.5. Even though the ini file clearly said to put the data into one spot, there must have been a registry entry or something else still pointing to 5.1. So while the three main files – IBDATA1 and such – were in the 5.5 directory, all the matching .frm files were down in the 5.1 directory.
When I assembled all the pieces together on my 2003 server, with the matching 5.5 MySQL software, POOF, the WordPress five databases exported completely smoothly, with all data up through the crash. Those five databases are up and running on the new server. Everything is fine with them. These five had only .frm files in their directories and were listed in there as INNODB. So the data was indeed in the IBDATA1 file I had.
That leaves the three remaining UBB forum databases. They have .frm as well as .myi and .myd files in the directories. The .frm files indicate that the tables are MYISAM. I had converted them all to INNODB just after the upgrade. So it seems that these .frm files are not the ones that go with the IBDATA1 file. But I can’t find any other .frm files on the old C drive. I was able to successfully export the data that was there in those .myi / .myd files – which was the data state just before I converted them to INNODB, last December. This at least gets the forums live and working with 8 or so years of data – but of course the last 9 months are still missing. Everything after the INNODB conversion is “trapped†in the IBDATA1 file.
I know I converted the tables to INNODB. I know this INNODB file I have (the IBDATA1) was the active one being used, as I just got all the wordpress content out of it. Apparently I now have to find the “correct†.frm files to go with that – or find some way to extract the data from the IBDATA1 file without having the .frm files. Alternately, could I edit the .frm files I do have and change them from saying these tables are MyISAM (their current state) to saying they are INNODB (which in reality they are)?
