In Jira, attachments are not part of the backup, and need to be backed up separately. I can see how a lot of people would like how Confluence puts it all into one file.

In our case, however, we will have a large number of attachments and hence the single backup file is very large.

In our case, we use a tool called HandyBackup which can synchronise a directory tree. With Jira since most attachments rarely change the back is small and fast on a daily basis. With Confluence, we have to backup one large file every day.

If the system could allow you to specify whether the attachments are included in the backup or not that would be helpful.