I can not guarantee that the following is true, but it is my
experience.

When an expire process runs, it reports the number of objects
examined.  From what I can determine, this is the number of
inactive backup objects, which is the maximum number of objects
that would be deleted by lowering the retention limits to keep only
the active backups.

Now compare this number with the total number of objects you
have in your system.  If the number is small, then dropping the
retention values will probably not release very much.

In my case, the values are
 Versions Data Exists  5
 Versions Data Deleted 2
 Retain Extra Versions 30
 Retain Only Version 50

This morning, I have over 36 million backup objects.  The expire
process for the last few days shows an average of  about 750,000
objects inspected.  Thus I estimate that about 2% of my data is
inactive.

Hope this helps.


Mike Hull               mhull AT uottawa DOT ca
Systems and Automation Analyst      613-562-5800 x 4587
Computer Centre        /  136 Jean-Jacques Lussier Room 543
University of Ottawa   /  Ottawa, Ontario   /  Canada   K1N 6N5