Backups On Server

[jes2gstoriesParticipant]

I’m new here and also new to hosting a website, so bear with me please. :-) I have a very large website. Lots of posts and what feels like a million pictures lol. I understand that my backups will be quite large. But, I only have 20 GB of server space via my web host. My site currently only takes up 5GB. I’m wondering…when the backup takes place and is downloaded to my selected cloud storage, why do the files still need to live on web server? Yesterday, the backups on the server took up so much space, I went over on my limit and my website went down. I changed the number of backups to retain from 2 to 1 to prevent this from happening, hopefully.

[Bryle CroduaModerator]

Hi,

UpdraftPlus is designed to create the zip files first on your local server before it sends to your remote storage. However, you have the option to either store the backups on both local and remote storage or store on remote storage only.

If you prefer to store to remote storage only, you have to enable the ‘Delete Local Backup’ option. To do that go to UpdraftPlus ‘Settings’ tab > ‘Show expert settings’ > select ‘Delete local backup’ and make sure to click the ‘Save Changes’ after. This will tell UpdraftPlus to automatically delete the backups on your server once the backups are successfully sent to your remote storage.

Kind Regards,
Bryle

[jes2gstoriesParticipant]

Ah HA! I haven’t seen that option yet, but I will go look for it. Thanks a lot!

[jes2gstoriesParticipant]

Ok, so I went to the settings, but that option was already checked. Why aren’t they deleting?

[Dee NutbourneModerator]

Hi,

It is possible that the backups are not correctly reaching the deletion step.

Please could you send us a copy of the latest backup log? This can be found in the Existing Backups tab.

The contents will be too long to post here directly, but you can use an online service such as Dropbox or Pastebin, and post the link here.

Best Wishes,
David N

[jes2gstoriesParticipant]

Hi David!

I think you may be right. Just from observations, I’m not sure if the backups ever complete. They always say not finished. And then, I scrolled to the bottom of this file, and the last thing looks like it stopped uploading at 59%.

https://promethean.box.com/s/f4kjfj4hai44rta6rzfjjtfywnroir5h

[Dee NutbourneModerator]

Hi,

From the log, it appears that there are two issues.

Firstly, it appears that your Dropbox account is currently full. This is likely to have been caused by the deletion issue, and is now causing further errors.

You will need to delete old backup files from Dropbox directly to clear room.

The second issue is that the backup process is running very long and is eventually killed off.
This appears to be caused in part by the size of the Uploads backup.
There appear to be some folders in the Uploads that are not needed in backups:

it-file-cache,builder-export-data,thumb-cache

I would recommend adding them to the Uploads ‘exclude these’ list, to try and reduce the size of the backup.

After making these changes, please could you try taking a fresh backup and sending us the log?

Best Wishes,
David N

[jes2gstoriesParticipant]

Sure. Thank you, David.

[jes2gstoriesParticipant]

Ok, we go.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dIWaTHhyoJBQpeVdnOybrlf-YvEfIkPB

I got a notification that my Dropbox was full again, so I’m guessing that’s why it didn’t finish, but I also see some files in my Google Drive (which has way more storage), so it could have just finished the backup there. My site is clearly more than 2GB, so I’ve taken Dropbox off the list and will use just the Google Drive.

[Dee NutbourneModerator]

Hi,

It does appear that the only errors in the backup are related to the Dropbox account being full.

Have you encountered any issues after disabling Dropbox?

Best Wishes,
David N

[jes2gstoriesParticipant]

Hi David,

Everything has been normal with Dropbox out of the question. Thank you so much!

[Author]

Posts