RE: Need backups for few entities and not full backup of environment
Hey!
Out of the box, you have 2 possibilities:
a) Full copy. 100GB (same as in Production).
b) MInimal Copy. This will copy system tables, customizations & Schema, meaning less size. However, this will not bring any "customer data" tables (Accounts, leads, opportunities, etc).
You might export small datasets for specific tables (for example, Accouns, contacts, leads, etc) using Configuration Migration tool. This is helpfull for just a few records (less than 100). Attachmetns will not be exported.
Another possibility you might use, is to build your own "migration" tool, that uses API to read data from one environment and insert it into the other environment.