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How to Back Up and Restore Your ARK World

Backups protect your ARK world, player data and configs. Always back up before a major change.

What gets backed up

A full panel backup captures everything on your server. The most important data for ARK is the SavedArks/ folder, your map save, player profiles and tamed dino data, plus GameUserSettings.ini. Everything is included automatically, you do not need to select individual folders.

Tip: ARK saves are large. Give the backup a few minutes to complete before restarting the server.

Using Premium Backups

Open your server in the panel and click Premium Backups in the left sidebar.

Premium Backups tab in the 8Bit Hosting panel

Create a backup

  1. Click CREATE BACKUP
  2. Give it a name if you want, e.g. "Before updating", or leave it blank
  3. Hit Start backup. It runs in the background, usually 1 to 3 minutes
  4. A green tick appears when it is done

Restore a backup

  1. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) next to the backup you want
  2. Choose Restore and confirm
  3. The panel stops the server, restores all files, then starts it again automatically

Download a backup

Three-dot menu → Download: saves the full archive to your PC.

Premium Backups tab in the 8Bit Hosting panel

When you click Create backup here, Restic automatically encrypts your server data and stores it on a separate storage system, entirely off the node your server runs on. If there were ever a hardware failure on the server, your data is still safe. There is nothing to configure, it works straight away. One click, encrypted, off-site.

Golden rule

Always take a backup before installing mods or plugins, updating the game version, or making major config changes. It takes two minutes and can save hours of rebuilding.

Need help? Open a ticket in Discord or email support@8bit-hosting.com.

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