Compress Backup drive

[Chuff2010]

My PSE 14 Backup is on an external hard drive which is nearly full. Can I compress the drive to reduce it's size instead of immediately buying another hard drive?

[Phil Pickering · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You can, but I don't think it will solve your issue of lack of drive space.

Next time you create a backup on the same drive, you will now need space for another full backup plus the compressed backup you have created. Similarly, if you just store the drive somewhere safely and don't perform another backup to that same drive, if you ever want to restore from this backup, you'll need to uncompress it. There won't be room on this drive to uncompress it there, so you'll have to uncompress it to your computer's hard drive - which I'm guessing might not have enough space to uncompress it to either.

Another problem you might run into is that if you leave the backup compressed and then go back to it years and years later, you might find that the compression technique you used is no longer supported any more. I've had this with a few archived Mac files from 20-25 years ago.

Best thing to do is get a new external drive. I don't know what size you'll need, but Amazon (UK) have 1TB drives for around £40, 2TB for £55 and 4TB for £80.

BTW are you doing a Full Backup every time or are you using the Incremental Backup option? The Incremental Backup option will use a lot less disk space. More info:

Back up or restore catalogs | Elements Organizer 15 and earlier versions

Doing Incremental Backups in Photoshop Elements Saves Disk Space But Not Time (Thanks @Don26812  🙂 )

Hope that helps 🙂

[Chuff2010]

Thanks Phil. Very helpful. New external drive it is then (not from Amazon though 😒)