Create, download, and restore a backup of your Discourse database

[xu2]

I downloaded the tar.gz backup file directly from the backup folder.

[xu2]

I didn’t pay attention to the version, and the previously installed Discourse has already been destroyed.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

I’d try upgrading the server that you’re trying to restore to.

[mint_saxon]

Hi! I arrived here from the “Off-site backups for disaster recovery are created every 12 hours. To download a backup manually, see our documentation.” link in a hosted Discourse site.

I was hoping to download one of the existing every-12-hours off-site backups. Is that possible? And if so, is that what’s meant by “download a backup manually”?

I don’t see any of these recent backups in the list, just two from last year.

For the moment, I just launched a new backup and I will download that.

[Lilly (Lillian)]

you can set the frequency and options for backups on your site in the settings at /admin/backups/settings. the download button sends a link to your admin email to download it

you will get an email like this that will let you save it locally to your computer

@mint_saxon

in a hosted Discourse site.

oh i just noticed you said hosted. i’m not sure but this topic is under Documentation > Self-Hosting hosted will have different backup settings.

[southpaw]

Hi @mint_saxon,

Sorry to see that your question didn’t get a response related to our hosting, yet.

The backups you referenced are intended solely for disaster recovery scenarios involving catastrophic infrastructure or cluster-level failures on our side.

These are not regular site-level backups and cannot be used to restore individual customer sites or staging environments on request. They are designed to protect and recover the hosting cluster as a whole, rather than provide point-in-time restores for specific sites.

Because of this, we’re unable to provide access to those backups, share a list of available snapshots, or perform customer-requested restores from them.

However, if you ever need to create a full backup that includes uploads, please contact our support team from an email address that is associated with an Admin account on your hosted site, and we’ll be glad to help.