Speeding up conversion of MyISAM to InnoDB
Let me start by saying, I hate ALTER. It's evil, IMHO.

Say, this is your current table schema - 

CREATE TABLE my_table_of_love (
id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
my_value VARCHAR(40),
date_created DATE,
PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE=MyISAM CHARSET=utf8;


Here's the path I recommend - 

Create a new table object that will replace the old one:

CREATE TABLE my_table_of_love_NEW (
id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
my_value VARCHAR(40),
date_created DATE,
PRIMARY KEY(id)
) ENGINE=InnoDB CHARSET=utf8


Insert all the rows from the old table by name into the new table:

INSERT INTO my_table_of_love_NEW (id,my_value,date_created)
SELECT id,my_value,date_created FROM my_table_of_love;


Smoke test your migration:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM my_table_of_love_NEW;
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM my_table_of_love;
SELECT a.id,a.my_value,a.date_created FROM my_table_of_love_NEW a
LEFT JOIN my_table_of_love b ON (b.id = a.id)
WHERE a.my_value != b.my_value;


Swap table names so that you can maintain a back up in case you need to rollback.

RENAME TABLE my_table_of_love TO my_table_of_love_OLD;
RENAME TABLE my_table_of_love_NEW TO my_table_of_love;


Proceed to regression testing.

This approach becomes more and more preferable with tables with multiple indexes and millions of rows.

Thoughts?