Minecraft Updated April 26, 2026

How to Back Up and Restore Your Minecraft Server

Create manual and scheduled backups of your Minecraft world, and restore from a backup when something goes wrong.

MinecraftbackuprestoreworldSFTPscheduler

Why Backups Matter

Worlds can be corrupted by bad plugin interactions, failed version upgrades, or simple human error. A backup from yesterday beats hours of grief. Back up before every major change — it takes two minutes and can save your entire world.

Where Your World Data Lives

By default, Minecraft stores world data in three folders in your server root:

Folder Contains
world/ The Overworld (blocks, player data, level.dat)
world_nether/ The Nether dimension
world_the_end/ The End dimension

If you've set a custom level-name in server.properties, the folder will match that name (e.g., survival/, survival_nether/, survival_the_end/).

Creating a Manual Backup via File Manager

  1. Stop your server in the WISP panel — this ensures no data is being written during the backup.
  2. Go to the Files tab.
  3. Select all three world folders (world/, world_nether/, world_the_end/).
  4. Use the Compress or Archive option to zip them into a single file (e.g., backup-2026-04-26.zip).
  5. Download the zip to your local machine.
  6. Restart your server.

Scheduling Automatic Backups in WISP

The WISP panel includes a Schedules feature. Set up a recurring backup task:

  1. Go to the Schedules tab in WISP.
  2. Create a new schedule — for example, daily at 4:00 AM.
  3. Add a Create Backup action.
  4. Save and enable the schedule.

Automated backups run while your server is live. WISP will suspend writes briefly during the snapshot. You'll find completed backups under the Backups tab where you can download or restore from them.

Restoring From a Backup

Restoring via WISP Backups tab:

  1. Go to the Backups tab in the WISP panel.
  2. Find the backup you want to restore.
  3. Click Restore (or the restore icon). WISP will stop the server, restore the files, and restart automatically.

Restoring manually (for backups you downloaded locally):

  1. Stop the server.
  2. In the Files tab, delete or rename the current world folders (world/, world_nether/, world_the_end/).
  3. Upload your backup zip via the file manager and extract it, or upload the folders directly via SFTP.
  4. Start the server.

What Else Should You Back Up?

World folders are the most critical, but for a full recovery you may also want:

  • server.properties
  • ops.json and whitelist.json
  • plugins/ folder (contains plugin jars and their config subfolders)
  • config/ folder (mod configs on Forge/Fabric)
  • eula.txt

Back Up Before These Actions

Always take a fresh backup before:

  • Upgrading or downgrading Minecraft version
  • Switching server type
  • Installing or removing major plugins or mods
  • Running large /fill or /forceload commands
  • Updating a plugin that touches world data
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