Symptoms

In Confluence the data appeared to be intact. However the XML backup appeared smaller than older backups. There are no error messages related to the backup in the log file.

Cause

It appears that the reason why the backup is smaller is due to a compression algorithm behaviour.

Uncompressed, the XML backup will be bigger than older backups. When you zip up both of the entities.xml files separately, you would find that the current backup's entities.xml zip result is smaller.

Resolution

Your backup is not corrupted and you can proceed as per usual with your backup.