Backup plan question

[wbodger]

So, I have my SQL Server 2k box setup with a weekly full backup and then nightly differentials (in addition to log shipping, but that is not part of this equation). Now, I get perhaps 300-400 transactions/day into this db. My full weekly backup is a little over 16 GB, but my daily differentials are almost 10 GB, which seems FAR too big to me. Is that right? Should they likely be MUCH smaller?

wb

 

[hammamet]

As I understand it the differential backup should grow over the week as each night it will back up all the database changes since the last full backup. Is this what is happening?

Do you have any updates happening on the database at the beginning of the week? If so, then this could account for the large change in size.

 

[wbodger]

It is growing each night and not much each night. I last ran a full backup on 1/10 and then an optimization job on 1/11 (well, it tried to run, but it failed). Do you think that would have created the large size of the differentials?

Maybe it is time to re-do the maintenance plan that I inherited...