Making the Database as Small as Possible

[Digital Jedi]

I want to keep posts and threads and such. Hence the reason for the backup. Extraneous things like signatures and avatar settings and things like that are not important. Anything to make the backup smaller, and by extension make transferring it to the new server not take as long.

I did do a mass pruning of some older obsolete threads and inactive posters. But is there anything else I didn't think of? I seem to remember someone saying you could purge signature data, but I can't seem to find it. Will purging some account settings make a difference/even possible?