# Backup Growth rate
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [December 20, 2018, 10:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756 "2018-12-20T10:14:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@me3](https://meta.discourse.org/u/me3)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2018, 10:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/1 "2018-12-20T10:14:32Z")
I notice on a new (\<1 mth) install of discourse the backup size increasing by a steady 0.2Mb / day.
Any thoughts on what grows day by day if new posts are not added?
Backups are to S3, but I’m wondering if it’s backing up backups.
I haven’t torn apart the gz’s yet.
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2018, 10:44am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/2 "2018-12-20T10:44:14Z")
We’re not backing up the backups.
Is your forum active? Do you users upload images?
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### Author:  [@me3](https://meta.discourse.org/u/me3)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2018, 10:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/3 "2018-12-20T10:56:54Z")
Just starting. No images yet.
It’s the DB growing by about 2MB / day which is about 0.2mb compressed.
Not a big problem, but interesting if the growth is continuous.
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### Author:  [@gerhard](https://meta.discourse.org/u/gerhard)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2018, 11:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/4 "2018-12-20T11:35:47Z")
I think the backup logs are causing this. The system user creates a PM for every automatic backup, but it doesn’t invite the admins unless there was an error. I think it’s safe to create the PM only when there actually was an error or if it was a manual backup. ~~I’m going to change that.~~
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/0bc1fa8aa4ea5393193cc5c44adbf7eee24cd395](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/0bc1fa8aa4ea5393193cc5c44adbf7eee24cd395)
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2018, 3:18am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/5 "2018-12-21T03:18:31Z")
Very nice change, thank you for bringing this up @me3 and excellent improvement @gerhard!
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### Author:  [@schungx](https://meta.discourse.org/u/schungx)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2018, 5:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/6 "2018-12-21T05:02:51Z")
But one PM hardly generates 2MB of data each day. If the forum is being read by users, could it be the table holding the user activity logs?
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### Author:  [@me3](https://meta.discourse.org/u/me3)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2018, 6:58am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/7 "2018-12-21T06:58:43Z")
I can upload the gz backups files somewhere if you like / want a look at them.
They aren’t particularly large yet.
It’s not a complaint. it’s a “that’s a strange steady growth rate” for a new nearly empty site.
I can’t attach files here or PM I don’t think.
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### Author:  [@gerhard](https://meta.discourse.org/u/gerhard)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2018, 11:39am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/8 "2018-12-21T11:39:02Z")
In my tests the backup size increased roughly 75kB because of the backup logs. There are a bunch of log tables that could increase in size even though there are no new posts. Feel free to look at a diff of the database dump if you are curious, but I don’t think there’s anything else we can improve here.
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### Author:  [@Dannii](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Dannii)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2019, 3:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/10 "2019-06-02T03:17:31Z")
After migrating to Discourse, I was concerned that our backups seemed to be increasing far more than expected. I was seeing backups increase by up to 30MB/week (after accounting for uploads) for only ~150 posts/week. But after about three months since migrating, the backups have stabilised to just 1-3MB/week. My guess would be that it took some logs some time to reach an equilibrium for new data vs expiring data. So if anyone else is in a similar situation after migrating, from my experience I’d say not to worry, it will eventually stabilise.
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2022, 9:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/11 "2022-10-28T09:04:22Z")
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2022, 9:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-growth-rate/104756/12 "2022-10-28T09:14:02Z")