Taking a manual backup before a risky change

One-click full snapshot of your server data - always take one before swapping mods or worlds.

#Taking one

Server → Backups → Create backup.

The backup includes your world, configs, mods, plugins, and server properties. It takes anywhere from 10 seconds (vanilla) to 5 minutes (massive modded world). You'll see progress live.

Once it's done, you can download it as a zip to keep a copy locally, or restore from it if something goes wrong.

Daily automatic backups are included on every plan. Manual backups are on top of those, and they are the ones that matter when you are about to do something deliberate.

#When to take one

Every time you are about to change something you cannot easily undo:

• Installing, updating or removing a modpack.
• Changing the Minecraft version, in either direction.
• Adding or removing mods, especially anything that writes world data such as chunk generators, dimension mods or storage mods.
• Importing a world from another host.
• Editing server config by hand.
• Running a world-editing command with a large selection.
• Any time somebody says "this should be fine".

The pattern people regret is taking the backup after the change, which preserves the problem rather than the state before it.

#Restoring

Backups → pick the backup → Restore. The server stops, the data is replaced, and it starts again on the restored state.

Everything that happened after that backup was taken is gone. That includes builds, inventories and progress from the intervening play sessions, which is worth saying out loud to your players before you press it rather than afterwards.

If you are unsure whether restoring is the right move, download the backup first. Then you have both states and can decide without a deadline.

#Automatic backups and what they are for

Daily off-site backups run on every plan and exist for the failures you did not schedule: hardware faults, a corrupted world, a mod that quietly ate something over a week.

They are not a substitute for a manual backup before a risky change, because a daily backup can be up to a day old, and the version you want is the one from ninety seconds ago rather than last night.

#Download a copy you control

Restoring from our backups is fine for most situations. Downloading the zip is what you want when the risk is larger: a host migration, an experiment you might abandon, a world you would be genuinely upset to lose.

A copy on your own machine is not subject to any retention window, ours or anyone's. For a world your group has been building in for two years, that is worth the five minutes.

#How long backups are kept

Automatic backups rotate on a retention window, so the oldest fall off as new ones are taken. Manual backups you have downloaded are yours indefinitely, because they are sitting on your disk.

If a specific backup matters to you, download it rather than assuming it will still be in the list next month.

Written and maintained by the Hostd engineering team. Last updated 2026-08-05. Notice a mistake? Tell us.