Topaz disk usage.

[Redcrown]

The Topaz AI suite takes up a lot of disk storage, and the default installation puts it on the system drive. On my Windows 11 desktop Topaz AI takes over 20 gigabytes and keeps growing with each update. For comparison, Photoshop itself only takes 5 gigabytes, and no other app comes close to that.

So, image backups of the system drive all carry this 20+ gigabytes of Topaz. But that's really not necessary. In case of a system crash and restore, it is easy and probably better to just re-install the Topaz programs using fresh downloads. Full image backups (Macrium, Aomei, etc.) are "all or none". You can't skip selected parts.

So I moved all the Topaz AI program installations to my secondary hard drive. I did that by un-installing and re-installing everything (Denoise, Sharpen, Gigapixel, Photo). I've never done that before, installing software off the system drive. But everything Topaz works OK. This, plus some other minor cleanup, shrunk my system backup image from 76 GB to 54 GB, and the backup runs much faster, of course.

My backup of the secondary drive is done on a file level, not full image. So it's easy to ignore the 20 gigs of Topaz, plus some other junk.

 

[sybersitizen]

The Topaz AI suite takes up a lot of disk storage, and the default installation puts it on the system drive. On my Windows 11 desktop Topaz AI takes over 20 gigabytes and keeps growing with each update.

What folder(s) are you talking about?

My only Topaz product is Photo AI.

Its main files are located in Program Files > Topaz Labs LLC > Topaz Photo AI. It's 1.17GB.

Others are located in Program Data > Topaz Labs LLC > Topaz Photo AI. It's 4.49GB.

There could be more files someplace, but I don't know where.

If you have three or more of their products, I guess that could come to 20GB.

 

[BobKnDP]

In my installation (Denoise, Gigapixel, Sharpen, and PhotoAI), the data folders consume about 24GB. Most of that space is files for models (*.tz). Gigapixel is over 9GB. The others, more like 4GB each,

The Topaz Program folders use about 4GB for the lot.

I'm unsure about your point. My "backup" is to image the C drive (SSD) to a spinner, using Macrium Reflect. Takes about 10 minutes.

 

[Redcrown]

I'm unsure about your point.

If you don't care about the extra 2 minutes those 24 GB of Topaz take for Macrium to image, and you don't care about the extra 24 GB in each Macrium image, then no point.

I keep 6 images of my system drive on an external spinner going back 6 months. And more copies on a disk kept in a bank safety deposit box. In 25+ years I've only had 2 system failures requiring restoration from backup. One was a virus 10+ years ago that was planted 6 months prior to activation. So restoring from a 1 week old backup didn't work.

So, 12 image copies times 20+ gigabytes of Topaz = 240+ GB saved by moving it off the system drive.

BTW - Have you seen that Macrium is killing the free lunch? No more updates of the free version and soon no support. Aomei has a free version and seems to be the leading contender, but I haven't tried it yet.

 

[BobKnDP]

Back in January (2023), Macrium announced end of life for the free version at the end of 2023. That doesn't mean that it will stop working then, just no more updates.

I'm currently using the paid version. Which doesn't seem superior to the free version, for my purposes.

I'm not systematic about backups. My primary backup is to an 18TB internal. At odd intervals, I'll copy an image or two to an external 16TB drive.