Seems it was this way with D7 as well...

When I  go to backup my site, I do a "compress-and-download" of the /public_html  directory, and I do an "export-and-compress[-and download]" of my mySQL database. This gives me everything I need to restore my site in the event I mess something up.

So here's the question:

Why, even after I clear every cache prior to exporting my database, is there so dang much cache data in those tables? And is there any way I can reduce that payload?

Thanks,

—Eric

Comments

@ericfoy - How are you generating the backup of your database?

If you use the Backup and Migrate module, it excludes data in a bunch of cache tables by default and gives you the option of being even more specific. 

See:

Using something like PHPMyAdmin, I am sure you could do the same. If you are using a Backup generated by CPanel in shared hosting you might not have this flexibility. 

I'm sure that if you generate your own Backup from MySQL on the command line, that you could do the above as well. 

I'm not sure why clearing the cache doesn't do this on it's it own (or maybe it does). There are folks in our community much more knowledgeable than me on this topic. 

Anyone else have ideas?