Unexpected backup file size.

[tomponzi]

I have noticed something odd when I inspected my back up folder today.

My back up files are exactly the same size, even after working on my realm and introducing quite a bit of new content. The file size appears not to have changed since I backed up on the 19th May, and I have 10 auto backups since that date, and two manual ones. There has been quite a bit of work going into my realm in the past two weeks and I would expect the file size to be increasing?

For interest, my back up file appears to be stuck on 920,876 KB.

Thinking that it was my machine that was behaving badly, I the went to my lap top and had a look there. It too is showing the same size of file between backups, even after quite a bit of work is being done. And, rather strangely, the size of the back file on the laptop seems to be stuck on 502,282 KB?

This behavior seems counter intuitive to my admittedly very limited computing knowledge. Have I run into some kind of Windows file size limit? Both machines are running Win 7.

Any ideas anyone?

[Farling]

The file is a database file, so it probably has lots of "holes" of data - spare space which hasn't been used yet.

[AEIOU]

Add a few maps and see what happens. Graphics are going to take up additional space. Flags on maps are just a few bits. Text is just a few bits. Links are probably just pointer changes. Deletions may clear pointers rather than remove content.

[rob]

What @Farling and @AEIOU said.

Anytime you delete stuff from the database, that usually remains as a hole that new data will utilize. Similarly, the database is going to grow in good-sized chunks when it needs more space. It's not like a text file that will grow by 1,000 bytes every time you add some text and save your changes. Instead, if more space is needed, it will grow by a large amount. After that, it will just keep consuming from that large chunk is already grabbed, so it won't grow again until it runs out of space and needs to grab another large chunk.

Hope this helps!

[tomponzi]

Thanks for the reply Rob. I shall stop worrying that my back up is borked!