Should I turn on deduplication in Windows Server to reduce the backup size?


Incremental backup

Data deduplication is a powerful feature on Windows Server to reduce the size of storage by eliminating file duplicates. Since CubeBackup only backs up new or modified data with each snapshot, there isn't much inherent duplication in the backup data.

Turn on Windows deduplication to save space

However, CubeBackup will only deduplicate files for the same user. That is,

  • if a user has two identical files stored in different directories, CubeBackup will only save one copy in the backup storage.
  • But if two or more users store an identical file, CubeBackup will keep a copy for each user. This is especially apparent when the Backup files shared with me option is enabled in CubeBackup for Google Workspace.

If you are storing a local backup on Windows Server, we recommend that you turn on Windows deduplication to save space.