Odd repo size with max compression?

[MichaelEischer]

@akrabu

So am I correct in saying that auto is something like “zstd -3” and max something like “zstd -19” and in either case if Restic sees that the compressed blob is bigger than the original blob, Restic discards the compressed blob and just uses the uncompressed blob?

Yes auto and max just correspond to different zstd levels. The detection that a blob is not compressible is already handled by zstd itself, so there’s no additional check for that in restic.

@akrabu

I’m assuming that whichever compression switch you use at init time is set as the “default” and can be “overridden” for each backup.

No, the init command does not even look at the --compression switch. A v2 repo always defaults to auto as compression level unless you specify something different for a command.