Lodehost
How the nightly backups work
Once every 24 hours a round passes every server and takes a backup. It does not blindly follow a clock: it looks at when your last backup was made. If a round is ever missed, the next one sees that your backup is older than a day and catches up, so a gap does not quietly turn into two days without a copy.
Your server keeps running while the backup is made. Stopping every server once a night would be an outage for somebody, because a night in Europe is an evening in America. You do not have to plan around it and your players do not get kicked.
| Rule | The number | Why it is set like this |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic backup | 1 every night | The copy you forgot to make is the one you need |
| Backups kept | 10 | Enough to go back more than a week on a normal server |
| Bin for the oldest | 7 extra days | An emptied chest is often noticed days later |
| Locked backups | Never roll off | Keep the copy from before a big update |
| Space for all backups | Up to 3 times your plan storage | A huge world cannot fill the machine others share |
| Price | Included | No add-on at checkout and none on the invoice |
Ten slots, a bin and a lock
You hold 10 backups at the same time, as many as your plan storage can carry. When an eleventh is needed, the oldest one is not deleted on the spot. It moves to a bin and stays there for 7 more days, and you can restore it straight from the bin.
That bin exists because damage is rarely spotted on day one. A griefer empties a storage room on Monday, the owner of that room logs in on Friday, and by then the good copy would already be gone on most schedules.
Lock the backup you cannot lose
Before a Minecraft version jump or a new modpack version, take a backup and lock it. A locked backup never moves to the bin and the nightly round never removes it, however many new backups come after it. If every slot is locked, the round tells you so and skips instead of forcing one out.
Storage ceiling
All backups of one server together may use up to three times the storage of its plan. Worlds compress well, so almost nobody reaches it, but a very large world keeps fewer copies. The panel shows how much room your backups take, so you see it before it matters.
How to restore a Minecraft server backup
Choose the moment on the Backups tab
Backups are listed newest first with their time and size, and the one in the bin underneath. Pick the last copy from before the problem, not simply the newest, because the newest may already contain it.
Take a backup of the server as it is now
Optional, but a good habit: press Create Backup first. Then the state you are about to leave is kept too, and you can come back to it if the older copy turns out to be the wrong one.
Stop the server
The panel refuses to restore a running server. A running Minecraft server keeps the world in memory and writes it to disk when it shuts down, which would overwrite what you just restored.
Press Restore and confirm
Every file in the server folder is replaced by the files in that backup. It takes about as long as the backup took to make.
Start the server and read the console
The first lines of the log show which world loaded and which plugins started, so you know within seconds that you are on the right moment.
What a restore puts back, and what it leaves alone
| Part of your server | After a restore |
|---|---|
| Overworld, Nether and End | Back to that moment, every block and chest |
| Plugins, mods and their config files | Back to that moment |
| server.properties, operators, whitelist and bans | Back to that moment |
| Your play address | Unchanged |
| Your plan and your billing | Unchanged |
| Panel logins and staff rights | Unchanged |
| Your other backups | Still there, nothing is used up |
A restore goes to one of the backups that exist. No Minecraft host can put a server back to an arbitrary minute between two backups, which is why a backup right before a risky change is worth the ten seconds.
Because the rest of your backups stay in place, you can move back and forth between two moments until you land on the one you meant. Restoring is free and there is no limit on how often you do it.
Download a backup to your own computer
Any backup can be downloaded as an archive. The download comes through our own domain rather than from the machine your server runs on, so the address of that machine stays private. The file is yours: keep it on your own disk, open the world in singleplayer, or take it with you if you ever move host.
Moving the other way works too. A world from another host or from singleplayer can be uploaded to your server, and our guide to moving a server covers which folders to bring along.
Backups the panel takes before risky actions
Two actions in the panel can wipe a lot of work if they go wrong, and both insist on a backup first:
- Resetting a world refuses to delete a world folder until a completed backup from the last day exists.
- Changing the server type, for example from Paper to Fabric, stops the server, takes a backup and waits until that backup has finished before it converts anything. More on changing version and server type.
Both also refuse to run while the server is on, for the same reason a restore does: a running server writes its world back when it stops.
Written and checked against the panel by the Lodehost team, last reviewed on 17 September 2026.
