# Why are backups so large?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-backups-so-large/31401>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [July 24, 2015, 5:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-backups-so-large/31401 "2015-07-24T17:54:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![BCHK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bchk/32/3268_2.png) [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2015, 5:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-backups-so-large/31401/1 "2015-07-24T17:54:30Z")

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We have about 250,000 posts from 25,000 topics - and our database / backup is about 4.5 backups (I have it set up for 2 backups - so I think the post database is about 2.25 Gig.

That seems really large for what are essentially short, simple text files.

Is there anyway that can be made smaller? How about a simple compression algorithm included so that we can save space on our backups?

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