How much history is stored and how can we limit it?

[gabegabe]

I do not see any setting where I could set how much storage do I allow for data collection. And also I don’t know what is the default?

Is there a way to limit the amount of storage it can use?

[tom_l]

It is this setting in the recorder integration: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/recorder/#purge_keep_days it lists the default as 10 days.

You can also limit the amount of data stored by excluding entities you are not interested in the history of.

How to reduce your database size and extend the life of your SD card

Preamble: @tom_l is the original author of this community guide. He proposed an analytical approach to decide for each entity_id whether to include or exclude it from the underlying database. @mbuscher suggested to go after the entities most often updated in the database, and exclude only those. Both approaches are now included in this community guide. Target audience: anyone who uses an installation on flash memory like a Raspberry Pi with an SD card or an SSD drive, or anyone who wishes to re…

[gabegabe]

First of all thank you very much @tom_l !

Now I have follow-up questions:

• “purging” removes all data or just the ones which are over the “keep_days” threshold?
• Is there any way I can limit based on the disk space? (e.g. keep any days that can fit into 1GB of disk space)
• How can I check how much space is used by my settings? (which folders/files to look for?)

[tom_l]

@gabegabe

“purging” removes all data or just the ones which are over the “keep_days” threshold?

Just the data older than the keep_days value.

@gabegabe

Is there any way I can limit based on the disk space?

No.

@gabegabe

How can I check how much space is used by my settings?

If you are using the default recorder database, check the size of config/home-assistant_v2.db

If you want to add a sensor to do this see: Add "file size" sensor to the System Monitor - #6 by duceduc