Every Discord bot hosting plan includes a free weekly backup of the container. It is useful, and it is not a complete safety net. The difference matters on the day you need it.
What a backup is
A backup is a copy of the files in your container, taken as an archive and stored on the panel. Your plan has room for two backups. The weekly backup fills those slots; when both are in use, you have to delete one before another can be created. Backups are listed in the game panel under Backups, where you can create one yourself at any time, download it, restore it or delete it.
What it covers
- Your bot's source files and anything else written into the container's filesystem.
- Configuration files you have placed there.
- Data your bot writes to a file (a JSON store or an SQLite file, for example).
What it does not cover
- The contents of the database your plan provides. A database runs outside the container's filesystem, so it is not in the file backup. If your bot keeps its data there, export it yourself on a schedule you choose.
- Anything hosted elsewhere: an external database, an API you call, files on someone else's storage.
- Anything on Discord's side. Your server, its channels, roles and messages belong to Discord, not to the container.
- Environment variables, including your bot token. Keep a copy of those somewhere safe; they are configuration, not files.
Restoring
Restoring a backup from the panel replaces the container's files with the contents of that backup. Anything written since it was taken is lost, so stop the bot first, and download the current state if there is anything in it you might want. A restore is not instant on a large container. Let it finish before starting the bot again.
When a backup really matters
Two actions destroy a container and cannot be undone:
- Reinstall runs the installation script again; files may be changed or deleted.
- Change runtime rebuilds the container from scratch and deletes everything on it.
Take a backup and download it before either. A backup that only exists inside the thing you are about to rebuild is not a backup.
The better habit
Keep the bot's source in a version control repository, and keep the backups for the data. Then a container you have lost is twenty minutes of work rather than a rewrite.