Database Backup Drive Occupancy We have 2 Databases whose backup files are close to 900 GB each.Backup Drive is 2 TB.Now the drive is fully occupied.The Database Backup files are compressed ones.

Database size in sp_helpdb shows as 171250 MB and 182350 MB.

Each week we have full backups and each day we have diff backups and .trn logs every 15 minutes. Last full backup size is getting close to 960 GB.

My question is apart from increasing backup drive size.what else should think of to free up some space.The drive contains all wanted files.

Thanks
You have options 


Move away the backup files to a network share or a central backup server. Based on your company's retention policy, the backup can be archived to tape or just deleted (Caution !). This way if you lost the backup drive, you still have backups.
For VLDBs, you have to look into a good workable (meeting your company's RTOsand RPOs) backup (and restore) strategy.


E.g. Take weekly full backup, daily diff and transaction log backups say 15mins... This way, you wont end up taking FULL backups. You can be creative to check - how much database has changed since the last full backup before taking a diff backup.



The take away is to do proper storage planning. Enable Instant file initialization and yes do test your restores ... since a backup is no good unless you can restore it !