---
name: "borg2-analyze"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "borgbackup2"
version: "2.0.0b19-1"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/borg2-analyze"
---

# borg2-analyze(1)

Analyze archives

## NAME

borg-analyze - Analyze archives

## SYNOPSIS

borg \[common options\] analyze \[options\]

## DESCRIPTION

Analyze archives to find "hot spots".

Borg analyze relies on the usual archive matching options to select the archives that should be considered for analysis (e.g. **-a series\_name**). Then it iterates over all matching archives, over all contained files and collects information about chunks stored in all directories it encountered.

It considers chunk IDs and their plaintext sizes (we don't have the compressed size in the repository easily available) and adds up added/removed chunks' sizes per direct parent directory and outputs a list of "directory: size".

You can use that list to find directories with a lot of "activity" - maybe some of these are temporary or cache directories you did forget to exclude.

To not have these unwanted directories in your backups, you could carefully exclude these in **borg create** (for future backups) or use **borg recreate** to re-create existing archives without these.

## OPTIONS

See *[borg-common(1)](/borg-common/1.md)* for common options of Borg commands.

### Archive filters

- **-a** *PATTERN,* **--match-archives** *PATTERN*

  only consider archives matching all patterns. see "borg help match-archives".

- **--sort-by** *KEYS*

  Comma-separated list of sorting keys; valid keys are: timestamp, archive, name, id, tags, host, user; default is: timestamp

- **--first** *N*

  consider first N archives after other filters were applied

- **--last** *N*

  consider last N archives after other filters were applied

- **--oldest** *TIMESPAN*

  consider archives between the oldest archive's timestamp and (oldest + TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.

- **--newest** *TIMESPAN*

  consider archives between the newest archive's timestamp and (newest - TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.

- **--older** *TIMESPAN*

  consider archives older than (now - TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.

- **--newer** *TIMESPAN*

  consider archives newer than (now - TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.

## SEE ALSO

*[borg-common(1)](/borg-common/1.md)*

## AUTHOR

The Borg Collective