Yes you can do that for your attachments and avatars.

For attachments, https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/...rage_db_to_fs1

For avatars, http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/userpics_db2fs

TBH if your host is crying about the size of the DB, you need to get a better host.

Also sometimes when you uninstall plugins they don't delete all tables and data off the database. You should check each table in the database and see if they were ever used by an old mod.

This is true, but I would not attempt that unless you know exactly what you are doing. :)

It's probably the attachments, but if you have phpMyAdmin you can go to the list of tables and sort them by size (by clicking on the 'size' column), then if you see any other tables that are large and it's not obvious what it is, it would give you something to look in to.

Also if you move attachments to the file system, that's something that you'd have to back up separately. If you lost everything you could download the vb files and restore your database, but if you didn't have a backup of the attachments and avatars files they would be lost.

I'd just like to add that before you do *anything* to your database, take a database backup. If you move the attachments out of the database and something goes wrong, you will want to have that database backup!

I would have to say you are right, attachments can eat a good amount of DB space. :)