# Reduce backup disk space

When sizing the Enhance backup role, it is recommended to allocate double the volume of your live data. This should suffice for a standard 30-day retention period.

If your backup disk is filling up faster than expected, follow these steps to identify and recover space:

  1. Identify large backups

To view a human readable size for each website's backups, run:

du -hs /backups/*
  1. Remove partial/failed backups

Any directory starting with wip-* inside the backups folder represents a partial or failed backup.

rm -rf /backups/*/wip-snapshot*

Where /backups is the path to your backup directory.

TIP

If no complete backups exist, review the contents of partial or failed (wip-*) backups before deleting them—they may still contain recoverable data.

  1. Disable backups for specific sites

It is possible to disable automatic backups on a per website basis. To do this you must be Admin: Websites > ... > Overrides > Disable Website backups