Well, humm.

It’s certainly the way to go – removing all the duplicated data before you backup, will certainly reduce the ever increasing burden.

However, I am currently trying a devastatingly efficient method of reducing data volumes – one which even most large businesses fail to use.

Don’t backup – delete!

Surprisingly, in all the years I have looked after company backups, there has been very little energy directed towards assessing exactly what is being backed up. The general philosophy has been to capture everything and worry about the data volumes later.

I tried to get this concept across many times – “how many copies of command.com do you have in your backups?” Implying that it would not just be that single file, but the whole operating system, multiple times over.

Still, to this day, I come across folk who whinge about their increasing disk usage, who have no idea what it is they are actually storing.

So, I am championing DBB procedure – delete-before-backup and enjoy increased disk space and lower costs!