How to Restore from JetBackup

JetBackup is a subsystem that allows you to restore — through your web browser — your entire account or part of it to a backup from a previous date. It also gives you the option to download a selected backup locally to your computer.

Regarding our backups, we also recommend that you read our backup policy here.

Below we present brief instructions on how to log in to JetBackup and restore your entire account or part of it. We also show how you can download a previous backup of your account locally to your computer.

Logging in to JetBackup

First, we log in to JetBackup:

• For dedicated servers, you will find the JetBackup link in the “Welcome kit” that you received at the start of your hosting service.

• For shared hosting servers, you log in through the DirectAdmin panel by going to Extra Features / JetBackup.

Restore or Download of the entire account

To restore our entire account from a backup of an earlier date, we go to the second option in the left-hand column, “Restore & Download”. From there, by selecting the “Full Account” tab, we choose the desired date and click “Restore” if we want to restore our account, or click “Download” if we want to download the entire specific backup.

ATTENTION: The restore will delete all files currently in the folder and replace them with the files from the restore. If you have created any new files after the date you are restoring to, those files will not be recovered after the restore process is complete.

Restore of individual files and folders

To recover only selected files of our website from a backup of an earlier date, we go to the second option in the left-hand column, “Restore & Download”. From there, by selecting the “Home Directory” tab, we can choose the desired date and click the “Change Files Selection” button in order to select specific folders or files for restore.

Browsing through folders is done by clicking on them or by clicking on the “Current Path” located at the top left, and the selection of folders/files to restore is done by ticking the checkbox to the left of each item.
Once we have selected all the files we want, we click the “Select Files” button.

In the example above, a single file (wp-config.php) has been selected for restore.
We then click the “Restore” button to restore the specific file we selected, or “Download” to save the file locally on our computer.
We confirm our choice by clicking the “Restore Selected Items” button.

ATTENTION: The restore will delete the files and folders you have selected and replace them with the files and folders from the restore.

We are then automatically taken to the queue, where we can see the progress of the restore. There we can also view previous restore and download actions that have been performed. Once the process is complete, the “Completed” message appears.

Download of individual files and folders

We can also use JetBackup to save to our computer data that exists in our account, from a backup of our choice.

For example, from the Dashboard we select Full Backups. Once we have chosen the desired date, we can view the entire content of that specific backup. From there, by clicking the “Download” button, the contents of the backup that will be downloaded are displayed. By clicking Remove items, we remove from the backup any data we do not want to download. We then click the “Download Selected Items” button.

Afterwards, we are taken to the queue, where we can observe the progress of the Download task.

Finally, we go to Downloads in the left-hand column and download the most recent entry.
A compressed folder containing the data we selected will be downloaded locally to our computer.

Restore or download of an individual database

To restore or download locally an individual database, we go to the second option in the left-hand column, “Restore & Download“, and select the “Databases” tab.

In the list that appears, we can see all the available databases of our account. Next to each database, in the “Created” field, we can click “Choose Other Backup” to select the date from which we want the restore to be performed. We then click “Restore” to restore the database, or “Download” to save it locally on our computer.

ATTENTION: The restore will replace the content of the selected database with the content of the backup from the date we selected.

Restore of an individual domain

In case we have more than one domain in our account and we want to restore only one of them (e.g. a stage domain) to a backup from an earlier date, we need to restore the files and the database of that specific website separately.
To restore the files, we go to the “Home Directory” tab. Next, we select the desired date from which we want the restore to be performed and click the “Change Files Selection” button in order to choose exactly the domain we want to restore (and not all the account’s files).
In the window that appears, we click on the domains folder to view the available domains we have.

Then, inside the domains folder, we tick the checkbox next to the domain we want to restore (in our example stage.example.org) and click the “Select Files” button.

Finally, we click “Restore” and confirm our choice by clicking “Restore Selected Items” so that the restore of the selected domain’s files can begin.

ATTENTION: The restore will delete the files and folders of the selected domain and replace them with the files from the date we selected.
We then also need to restore the database of the website, by following the steps in the previous section “Restore or download of an individual database“.

A reminder that with JetBackup you can restore one of the available previous backups of your account, but you cannot take a new backup by yourself.

If you want to take a new backup, see our article specifically for the DirectAdmin panel here. Otherwise, if you have a dedicated server, you can request a new backup from us through our helpdesk.