Minecraft Guidance

How to Create and Manage Minecraft Server Backups

EstewardLolEstewardLol
Updated September 16, 2026·8 views

This guide explains everything that you need to know on how to back up your Minecraft server to excluding unnecessary files to save space, scheduling automatic backups, and restoring your server if anything goes wrong.

Overview

Backups are your server's safety net. Whether you are running a small SMP with friends or a large public network, regular backups protect your world, player progress, plugin configurations, and databases from:

  • World or chunk corruption
  • Plugin/mod conflicts after updates
  • Accidental file deletion or admin errors
  • Player griefing or malicious attacks

Our game server panel provides built-in tools to manage backups effortlessly.

How to Create Backups

Creating a manual backup before updating plugins, making major build changes, or tweaking server settings is strongly recommended.

  1. Navigate to Backups:

    • Log into your BaoHost.
    • Select your Minecraft server.
    • In the left sidebar under the MANAGEMENT section, click on Backups.

  2. Start a New Backup:

    • Click the New Backup button located in the top-right corner.
    • (Optional) Enter a descriptive Backup Name (e.g., Pre-1.20.4-Update or Before-Nether-Reset).
    • (Optional) Check the Locked option if you want to protect this backup from being automatically deleted when backup limits are reached.

  3. Wait for Completion:

    • Click Start Backup.
    • The panel will compress your server files in the background. You can monitor the progress on the Backups page.
    • Once finished, the backup size, creation time, and SHA-1 checksum will be displayed.

Excluding Files: Using .pyroignore & Ignored Directories

By default, creating a backup includes every single file and folder in your server directory. While there are no individual backup size limits(yet), your server has a limited number of backup slots. Excluding temporary files, render maps, and old logs keeps backups lean and speeds up creation time.

You can set exclusions in two ways:

  • In the Backup Window: Type the files or folders to skip directly into the Ignored Files & Directories box when creating a backup.

  • Automatically via .pyroignore: If you leave the Ignored Files & Directories box blank, the system automatically uses the rules defined in a .pyroignore file located in your root server directory (if present).

How to Create a .pyroignore File

  1. In the left sidebar, navigate to MANAGEMENT > Files.

  2. Click the New File button.

  3. Add the file/folder paths you wish to exclude. The system supports wildcard matching (e.g., *.log) as well as negating rules by prefixing a line with an exclamation point (!path/to/include).

Here is a recommended starting template:

# Exclude server log files & archives
logs/
*.log
*.log.gz

# Exclude web map render caches
plugins/dynmap/web/tiles/
plugins/BlueMap/web/tiles/
plugins/Squaremap/web/tiles/

# Exclude temporary caches & crash reports
crash-reports/
cache/
.mixin.out/

  1. Click Save.

  2. Save the file as .pyroignore in your server's root directory (/).

💡 Tip: Excluding web map tiles (Dynmap/BlueMap) and log files can shrink your backup file size by 50% to 80%, making backups much faster to complete!

How to Automate Backups (Schedules)

Never worry about forgetting to back up your server again. You can automate backups on a daily or weekly schedule using the panel's Schedules feature.

  1. Go to MANAGEMENT > Schedules in the left navigation panel.
  2. Click Create Schedule.
  3. Fill in the schedule details: Fill in the schedule settings:
  • Schedule Name: Enter a name for the schedule (e.g., Daily Automated Backup).
  • Cron Expression: Enter your preferred frequency using the 5 cron fields. Click the built-in Crontab Guru option in the menu if you need help building custom expressions.
  • Only When Server Is Online: Toggle this ON if you only want the backup task to execute while the server is actively running.
  • Schedule Enabled: Toggle this ON to ensure the automated schedule runs on your set interval.
  1. Click Create Schedule.
  2. Select the newly created schedule from the list and click New Task.
  3. Set the Action to Create Backup.
  4. Click Create Task.

Restoring, Downloading, and Managing Backups

On the Backups page, each saved backup has an option menu (... icon on the far right):

Downloading a Backup

  • Click the ... menu next to the backup and choose Download.

💡 TIP: Keep a local copy on your personal computer or cloud drive for extra redundancy.

Restoring a Backup

⚠️ IMPORTANT: Before restoring a backup, STOP your server from the Console tab to prevent file corruption.

  1. Click the ... menu next to the backup you wish to restore.
  2. Select Restore.
  3. Confirm whether you want to delete existing files that are not included in the backup.
  4. Once the restoration process finishes, start your server from the Console.

Locking a Backup

  • Locked backups cannot be deleted manually via bulk delete or automatically purged when slot limits are reached.
  • Click ... > Lock to preserve important milestones (e.g., world launch, major events).

Best Practices for Server Administrators

  • Keep at least one offsite backup: Download an extra copy of your world to your computer once every month.
  • Check your backup limit: Note the storage limit indicator at the top right of the Backups page (e.g., 1 of 2 backups | 3.5GB storage used).
  • Test your backups: Periodically restore a backup on a test server or local singleplayer world to verify everything works properly.

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