why do backup files keep getting bigger?

[harry7474]

The problem

when i started using autobackup, the backup files were about 100 MB in size. by now they have blown up to more than 600 MB, taking up A LOT of space on my NAS.

What version of Auto Backup has the issue?

1.5.0

What version of Home Assistant are you running?

2024.6.3

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

If you're running HA OS/Supervised, what version of the Supervisor are you running?

2024.06.0

Example YAML snippet

service: auto_backup.backup_full
data:
  compressed: true
  keep_days: 15

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

[rwzdoorn]

I have this issue as well. I already tried to exclude the backup folder but this did not help. I'm already in 5GB's for each backup.

[kmtchl]

I have this issue as well. I already tried to exclude the backup folder but this did not help. I'm already in 5GB's for each backup.

Is your media library growing? I thought my issue was that I was including each back up in my new back ups so also excluded the back up folder. Turned out it's my media i.e. camera recordings have been using a lot more space than usual.

[steps56]

Its the recorded data from many entities which lets the backup grow.
Using a ssd Disc as HA system will give a lot of space AND failure safety about crashing sd cards f. i.
If you want a slim HA, you may disable date logging and/or set recorder purge to a short time.
All done at configuration.yaml

[jcwillox]

This would be a Home Assistant issue not auto backup issue, auto backup uses home assistants built in backup feature, that said it's probably not a bug with HA likely something's generating a lot of data, like what's been suggested above. Home Assistant prevents you from including the backup folder in backups so unless you move those backups into like the configuration directory each time you won't have recursive backups.

You might want to extract and inspect one of your backup files to see what's using all the data, often it's the database file. A tool like windirstat or treesize free might help with that.