.vbk file size is not reduced after file deletion

[DiabZen]

Hello everyone,

I am completely new to a professional backup software so please excuse my (maybe) stupid question.

We are using Veeam Backup & Replication 10; forward incremental; synthetic full every Saturday.
My problem is, that I copied a large folder of 300GB and forgot to delete it as I did not need the copy anymore. The next day it was included in the synthetic full backup. Since then our backup was as twice as big. I deleted the copy of the folder and waited until the next full backup. The folder is not included anymore but the size of the .vbk file is still as big.

What can I do to reduce the file size back to the actual size without the deleted data?

[PetrM]

Hello,

Are you talking about backup of virtual or physical machine?

The first thought is to verify that the checkbox "Exclude deleted file blocks" is selected in backup job settings.

Thanks!

[DiabZen]

Thanks for your reply!

In this case it is a backup of a physical machine.

I read about this feature but these three options for data reduction do not appear in the advanced settings.

[PetrM]

Hello,

Yep, the option is available for the virtual workloads.

I'd say it is expected that 300 Gb are included in the last incremental backup because the corresponding blocks are considered as changed blocks from CBT perspective.
But it's not obvious at all why full backup became twice bigger.

Could you please contact our support team and paste the support case ID over here? It seems debug logs analysis is required to reveal the root cause.

Thanks!

[DiabZen]

Hello,

just wanted to let you know that my problem seems to be solved.
I read that in my case an active full backup could reduce the file size to what it used to be. I just changed the settings from synthetic to active full. After the scheduled active full backup the deleted data does not seem to be included anymore and the file size is what I expect it to be. So I think I will just stick active full backups from now on.

[Vitaliy S.]

On a side note, you can keep running synthetic fulls and use this option (defragment and compact) for the full backup.