Purpose of snapshot removal

[Cadish]

Hi,

What’s the main purpose of removing snapshots? Is it solely to free up space, or will it speed up some processes too?

I’m asking this because I don’t have a space issue, but want to know if it’s useful to remove snapshots (according to a policy).

Thanks!
Cadish

[fd0]

It’s mainly there to free up used space. If you have many (> 200 or so) snapshots on a high-latency remote like B2, then it’ll slow down restic’s operations to list and query all snapshots (which correspond to files on the server). Having less snapshots will yield a speed increase then.

[Cadish]

Thanks for your answer. Is Google drive (via rclone) considered as a high latency remote?

[fd0]

Yes, it is (unfortunately)…

[Cadish]

Thanks a lot for your answer, @fd0! Really appreciate your work and dedication a lot!!

Thanks!

[rawtaz]

@fd0

It’s mainly there to free up used space. If you have many (> 200 or so) snapshots on a high-latency remote like B2, then it’ll slow down restic’s operations to list and query all snapshots (which correspond to files on the server). Having less snapshots will yield a speed increase then.

@Cadish Please note that removing snapshots will not automatically free up the space they (and no other snapshots) occupied. In order to free up the space, you need to use the prune command in restic, or the --prune option to the forget command. See Removing backup snapshots — restic 0.16.3 documentation for more details and examples.