Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Thursday, 27 March 2025 17:41 CDT

aimlesslady

It seems the last few backups I have done have doubled the size of the zip backup. At first, I was surprised that it had 2 files (2000 GB each), but I thought, okay, my client may have added some non-optimized images or something. But now it is 4 files. I have deleted any backups, even though I have excluded them from the backup. I do not understand why the files have grown. I am not skilled in analyzing the log file. I have attached it so maybe you can advise me on what is causing this to happen.

Thank you in advance,

Ellen

Friday, 28 March 2025 03:14 CDT

nicholas

It's an easy thing to look for in a log file. Just search for large file and you'll see everything that's over the large file limit, including path and size. There are 70 files. One is images/data.tar at about 10 MiB, the others are MP4 and PDF files –a few in images, most in RSForms' uploads folder– totaling 1.5 GiB.

That said, the largest part of your backup appears to be the #__rsform_submission_values table which I presume contains the submissions from the form(s) on the public site. It has nearly 3.5 million records. In my experience, backing up monstrous tables like that does result in very large backup archives.

I checked the log file but I do not see any duplicate tables / database, older backups, or duplicated folders being backed up.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Friday, 28 March 2025 08:11 CDT

aimlesslady

Thank you for your prompt reply. I see what you are referring to-the uploads in the submission files and the number of submissions altogether. I will ask my client if we can delete the old ones and try to reduce the number. I was unable to locate the images/data.tar file. Can you help me locate it so we can delete it?

Friday, 28 March 2025 11:50 CDT

nicholas

That's what I saw in the archive, a file named data.tar under images. If you don't see it, it might have already been removed.

And yes, I think removing the old submissions is a good idea. When a database table starts growing over a couple million rows you start observing a measurable performance impact.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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