#### 13.1.20.1 Files Created by CREATE TABLE

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 For an `InnoDB` table created in a file-per-table tablespace or general tablespace, table data and associated indexes are stored in a [.ibd file](glossary.html#glos_ibd_file) in the database directory. When an `InnoDB` table is created in the system tablespace, table data and indexes are stored in the [ibdata\* files](glossary.html#glos_ibdata_file) that represent the system tablespace. The [`innodb_file_per_table`](innodb-parameters.html#sysvar_innodb_file_per_table) option controls whether tables are created in file-per-table tablespaces or the system tablespace, by default. The `TABLESPACE` option can be used to place a table in a file-per-table tablespace, general tablespace, or the system tablespace, regardless of the [`innodb_file_per_table`](innodb-parameters.html#sysvar_innodb_file_per_table) setting.

 For `MyISAM` tables, the storage engine creates data and index files. Thus, for each `MyISAM` table *`tbl_name`*, there are two disk files.

|       File       | Purpose  |
|------------------|----------|
|`*`tbl_name`*.MYD`|Data file |
|`*`tbl_name`*.MYI`|Index file|

[Chapter 16, *Alternative Storage Engines*](storage-engines.html), describes what files each storage engine creates to represent tables. If a table name contains special characters, the names for the table files contain encoded versions of those characters as described in [Section 9.2.4, “Mapping of Identifiers to File Names”](identifier-mapping.html).

