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When i am working my Altium project files (schematic and pcb), i realized that they are stored in "History" folder for everytime i click "Save" button. Size of "History" was gigabytes. Do you know a way that can prevent this situation?

These are my Local History and Backup preferences;

enter image description here

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    \$\begingroup\$ Before you "solve" this problem, consider what's the cost of a few gigabytes of disk space, compared to the value of the days of your time you might save by keeping this data. \$\endgroup\$
    – The Photon
    Dec 14, 2016 at 15:57
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    \$\begingroup\$ I agree with The Photon. I keep all my History until a board has been manufactured correctly. Between design revs I check into version control (SVN). Disk space is practically free and you never know when you need that really old version. \$\endgroup\$
    – Joel Wigton
    Dec 14, 2016 at 18:07
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    \$\begingroup\$ It depends on the project. The cost is really high for "a few gigabytes" for mine. So if you have solution, answer or.. \$\endgroup\$
    – layout789
    Dec 14, 2016 at 22:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ The Photon makes a very good point;-) \$\endgroup\$
    – Steve
    Aug 22, 2018 at 23:30

3 Answers 3

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Go to:

DXP -> Preferences -> Local History -> Number of days to keep documents in history -> [number]

Here you can set the local history. There is also an option for backup to a server, save auto saves in history and the auto save interval. It's your auto save interval that is too short and the auto saves are saved in history.

The preferred model is save the last [number] saves but Altium16 does not have this feature. Depending on the project (importance), I would set the preferences. In your situation I would cleanup the history folder every day or two.

Automated backups will help a lot in recovery of old files. As long you are careful with changes it's not necessary to keep the history folder.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thank you. I added the screenshot of my preferences to question. Actually realized that it does not save automatically only, it saves everytime i click save button manually. Can you suggest a way to solve this problem? Because i am saving files reflexively and it causes a big data storage. \$\endgroup\$
    – layout789
    Dec 14, 2016 at 8:48
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    \$\begingroup\$ Did you intent for Altium to write a backup every hour to appdata? Don't use appdata for backups. \$\endgroup\$
    – user125002
    Dec 14, 2016 at 13:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ No, i did not intent. It saves pcbs and schematics to "History" folder in project's folder. \$\endgroup\$
    – layout789
    Dec 14, 2016 at 14:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ Thats true. But it also writes 10 copy's of the whole project to appdata... Clearing the history folder manual is for me the only knows solution. \$\endgroup\$
    – user125002
    Dec 15, 2016 at 6:42
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Altium provides an auto-saving feature, as well as a local history folder which copies a zip of each file whenever it is saved (manually). These are independent of each other. While auto save can be disabled, the local history can not. The best you can do is reduce the number of days to 1. Here is some more detail on this.

EDIT: Sorry, I just noticed this question is a couple months old. I'm not sure how it ended up on the first page of the top questions list.

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Most of the space is taken by an Altium project in creating restore points in history folder of the project files. What I do when I need to save some space is that I delete all files except the last saved Schematic and PCB doc.

This keeps the restore point intact while removing extra files. This might save you some MBs per project. I would still suggest getting a hard disk to increase your system space!

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