Thanks Andrew, I'll go over what you said and pin point what I haven't done, then I'll let you know if anything happens, I'm also gonna try Peter's suggestion.

Reason for size reduction is how long the back ups take....there's data from sinc 1993 that really isn't needed.

Assuming your backup zips/compresses files, the size of the file is not what determines the speed of the backup. It's the number of records that are contained in the file that makes the difference. Blank space in a file is ignored when zipping/compressing.

Honestly, you shouldn't delete history just because your backups take too long. You should get a faster backup method.

Steve