content_image/735815.jpg
mechanism used by the virus-scanning software, and the way in which MySQL rapidly updates different files, which may be identified as a potential security risk. 

After installing MySQL Server, it is recommended that you disable virus scanning on the main directory ( datadir ) used to store your MySQL table data. There is usually a system built into the virus-scanning software to enable specific directories to be ignored. 

In addition, by default, MySQL creates temporary files in the standard Windows temporary directory. To prevent the temporary files also being scanned, configure a separate temporary directory for MySQL temporary files and add this directory to the virus scanning exclusion list. To do this, add a configuration option for the tmpdir  parameter to your my.ini  configuration file. For more information, see Section 2.3.4.2, “Creating an Option File” . 

## 2.3.1 MySQL Installation Layout on Microsoft Windows 

For MySQL 8.0 on Windows, the default installation directory is C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0  for installations performed with MySQL Installer. If you use the ZIP archive method to install MySQL, you may prefer to install in C:\mysql . However, the layout of the subdirectories remains the same. 

All of the files are located within this parent directory, using the structure shown in the following table. 

<img src='content_image/735815.jpg'>

## 2.3.2 Choosing an Installation Package 

For MySQL 8.0, there are multiple installation package formats to choose from when installing MySQL on Windows. The package formats described in this section are: 

•MySQL Installer 

•MySQL noinstall ZIP Archives 

•MySQL Docker Images 

Program Database (PDB) files (with file name extension pdb ) provide information for debugging your MySQL installation in the event of a problem. These files are included in ZIP Archive distributions (but not MSI distributions) of MySQL. 

