After installing the free version of Splunk on a standalone Windows 7 PC and configuring Splunk to monitor the windows logs, does Splunk backup and archive the Windows logs (System, Security, and Application) to another folder on the harddrive? I can't really find any questions/answers as to how Splunk handles the Windows logs. Or is this something that has to be done manually, or can Splunk be setup/configured to do this after monitoring is setup?
Splunk wont backup the files but rather index them and retain them in Splunk for a default of 6 years or 500GB, whichever comes first. The index files are roughly 35 - 50% of the original file size depending on how many unique terms are in the logs. The data is stored under C:\Program Files\Splunk\var\lib\splunk\<INDEX-NAME>\db
http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.0.2/Indexer/HowSplunkstoresindexes