Question
How to reduce snapshot size
- Posted on June 3, 2016
- DigitalOcean
Asked by 24326124313024334a657059757566
I am doing snapshots recently to backup my data. But their size is growing. Even when i do the cleanup, the snapshot size remains the same as it was before. Few days ago because of my fault, my script filled all avaliable 20 gb space, i deleted al those files, so i have 7 gb free now but myand so snapshots are now 20 gb sized (and their creation time is 20 minutes!).
I think the snapshot size may be growing because of ‘rm -rf’ may only mark data as ‘deleted’ but do not ‘annulate’ disk space and DO snapshot burner copies that as well. IDK how linux file deletion happens, correct me if i’m wrong.
I think the easiest way to fix it is to create new droplet and copy everything to it. But please help if you encounted that problem and know a better way to fixed.
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.
Become a contributor for community
Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.
DigitalOcean Documentation
Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.
Resources for startups and SMBs
The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.
The developer cloud
Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.
Get started for free
Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*
*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.
Ok, so I spoke to the support team and found out that although you’re not using the “empty” space on the droplet it gets snapshotted as well. The file size is not compressed. So if you’re running a 20 gb droplet, the unused space gets added to the snapshot. I think it’s better to switch to alternative backup methods. You don’t want to end up with more than a dozen snapshots weighting at 19 gb’s each in the end.
I’m having the same issue. My latest snapshot is huge compared to the one just created a couple of days ago. 18.14 GB vs 2.65 GB. I’m running a basic LEMP setup with WordPress. Looking at my “/” directory as root with
du -sh /it’s only showing 2.1G. Where are all these huge files?Are you sure you’re not just using that space even though you deleted the files? Files that are still being used by programs will stick around when deleted until those programs stop using them. They contribute to filesystem size that way.