# Why are backups so large?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-backups-so-large/31401>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [2015 年 7 月 24 日午後 5:54 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-backups-so-large/31401 "2015-07-24T17:54:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\
**Post date:** [2015 年 7 月 24 日午後 7:19 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-backups-so-large/31401/3 "2015-07-24T19:19:57Z")

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Backups are compressed, that’s what the `.tar.gz` extension means. It is basically `.zip` for UNIX:

 ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/6/0/60fa1c7957c885b81fa454a52ac93366167f25d1.png) 

That’s a 742 MB backup that is compressed into a 415 MB file:

 ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/8/7/87ed7ff3931be9c406df8f55594a3a9e73be7bfa.png) 

It does include uploaded images, if you extract it:

![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/c/7/c70d15190bdbe8e1bf36c4a4fce189a871d6b457.png)

The `uploads` folder is 314 MB across 6,947 files and 116,168 folders (!).

You can get smaller backups by opting not to include the uploaded images as well, but it won’t be a complete archive of the content (text and images) that makes up the topics on your site!

Remember images are not very compressible. But text is. If I compress just `dump.sql` alone with 7zip it goes from 339 MB to 60 MB.

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