A backup is a full snapshot of your server's files that you can roll back to later. Take one before any change you're unsure about, and a broken world, a bad plugin update, or a fat-fingered delete turns into a two-minute fix instead of a disaster. Open Backups from your server menu to get started.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| You need | Any Falix server |
| Plan | Free saves to your own Google Drive; premium stores backups for you |
| Time | Five minutes to make your first one |
Where your backups live
This is the one big difference between plans, so it's worth knowing up front.
| Free | Premium | |
|---|---|---|
| Where they live | Your own Google Drive | On the node, alongside your server |
| Setup | Connect a Google account the first time you open the page | None — stored for you |
| Counts against a limit? | No — they're your own files | Yes, typically around 5 |
| When the limit is full | No limit | Oldest unlocked backup is auto-deleted; locked ones never are |
Create a backup
Press Create and you'll see a few optional fields:
- Name — label it so you know what it was ("before 1.21 update"). Optional; it gets a timestamp either way.
- Exclude patterns — one path or pattern per line to leave out (big log folders, caches). Optional.
- Lock — "Prevents accidental deletion until manually unlocked." A locked backup can't be deleted — not by you, not by the auto-cleanup — until you unlock it. Use it for the snapshot you never want to lose.
🎯 Good to know: There's a light cooldown — at most 2 backups every 10 minutes, so you can't accidentally spam them.
How long it takes depends entirely on how much data you have: a small bot project is done in seconds, a large modded world with gigabytes of files takes a few minutes. The server keeps running the whole time, so there's nothing to wait around for.
Restore a backup
Restoring puts the saved files back onto your server. You get two modes:
- Full Restore — brings back the entire snapshot.
- Selective Restore — pick just the files or folders you want out of the backup.
One toggle changes everything: Delete all files before restoring.
- Off (default) — only files that exist in the backup are written back over what's there. Files you created after the backup are left alone.
- On — your current files are wiped first, so the server ends up exactly like the snapshot. Use this to undo a mess completely.
⚠️ Heads up: A restore overwrites live data, so you have to type
RESTOREto confirm. Take a fresh backup first if the current state has anything worth keeping.
What a restore does to a running server
You can start a restore whether the server is up or down, with one condition: it can't already be busy with another job — an install, a transfer, or another restore. If it is, the panel tells you the server "is not currently in a state that allows for a backup to be restored"; wait for the other job to finish and try again. While the restore runs, the server drops into a restoring state and isn't usable, then returns to normal on its own when it's done. For a clean restore of a live world or database, stop the server first so nothing is writing files as they're swapped out.
Download and delete
- Download saves the backup to your computer — handy for keeping an off-Falix copy. It needs the download permission.
- Delete removes it. To prevent accidents you type the backup's name to confirm, and a locked backup must be unlocked first.
⚠️ Heads up: Do backups survive deleting the server? It depends on where they live. Free-plan backups sit in your own Google Drive, so deleting the server doesn't touch them — they're yours to keep. Premium backups are stored on the node alongside the server, so deleting the server takes them with it. Before you delete a premium server, download anything you want to keep, or restore it onto another server first.
Automatic backups
You don't have to remember to do this by hand. The Backups page has an Auto tab for scheduled snapshots, and the Backup task on the Schedules page can fold a backup into any routine — take one every night at 4 AM, or right before a scheduled restart. Set it once and you always have a recent snapshot.
When to back up
Make a backup before anything that touches a lot of files at once:
- World surgery — resetting, swapping, or regenerating a Minecraft world.
- Big plugin or mod changes — major version jumps, or installing several at once.
- Switching applications — changing your server's application reinstalls it and wipes the files, so back up first if there's anything to keep.