Very true, however in case of HA you can always make a fresh install and the restore from backup all configuration files over it. Tested few times in the past, works perfectly. Not real restore, rather rsort of ebuild of the machine.
Personally I run HA as VM on ESXi server and use Active Backup on Synology to backup entire VM. This way I can restore it fully from any past backup in less than 15 minutes.
Just thinking out aloud: wouldnāt that be prone to reinstalling the issue you might have had in the first place?
Setting Up a fresh install as you describe and then restoring a (Config) backup would be the safest chance for an optimal system?
It is painfully simple these days and the only thing you need is a daily backup.
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A question about āRestart Home Assistant ā Quick reloadā feature.
I have some amount of yaml-set integrations (which are part of HA, not 3rd party) - seems that they are not affected by this feature?
If they have the ability to reload, then theyāll be included. It depends on if the developer of the custom integration added that ability.
Thanks!
Do you know is it mandatory for integrations to have an ability of reloading?
I am going to create issues for integrations which seem to not reload.
Itās optional IIRC
I would argue that the default backup option is not optimized for a RPi running off an SD card.
First, there are space constraints on the SD card. Second, there is the issue of excessive writes shortening the life of an SD card.
But even disregarding those issues, the typical case when a restore is needed is where either (1) the SD card is corrupted and therefore the backup on it is unavailable, or (2) you want to do a full re-load of the OS image and therefore will overwrite the SD card, making the backup unavailable.
In either case, the backup needs to be external to the device youāre restoring before you start. It seems to me for all these reasons, it would make sense to create the backup where it would be most useful and not detrimental to the running system in the first place.
I agree with this in particularā¦
I have another application (my wallbox / EV charger) that is using an RPI as Host for the OS ā¦ but even there, backups are created locally on the SD it is running on.
Thatās a ācommonā design approach, because else, you have to mount external drives etcā¦
All those application are comming with the ādownload your backupā optionā¦
And all those have the same issuesā¦ downloading your backups could cause file corruption, restoring needs additional effort and sometimes knowledge about networks, how to mount devices on linuxā¦
Therefore, they are limited, and designed to be āas simple as possibleāā¦ which isnāt something I would use when it comes to āreliabilityāā¦ and therefore, using HA on an RPI was NEVER something I thought about.
Itās just not the device I would consider for a āreliableā piece of my homeAutomation and Network architectureā¦
It is OK for remote applications, such as my Wallbox, where I cannot run a complete serverā¦ but in fact: I COULD run the main Software on my Proxmoxā¦ and just use the existing RPI as a remotely controlled deviceā¦ this is something, I need to consider in the future.
Anyway:
My recommendation when it comes to backups:
Use other methods to backup your systemā¦ the internal backups are āniceā to restore if an update broke an integrationā¦
The error in question here (above) seems to be differentā¦ it was not caused by an integration that just stopped workingā¦
100% agreement on this. Perhaps we (the HA community) should do a better job of communicating this to new users. Iāve been reluctant to go against the conventional wisdom of recommending frequent backups using the built-in HA functionality. But it seems we may be setting users up for future problems if we discourage them from developing a backup and restore strategy which works for their environment.
so my strategy is:
create partitial backups when an update will be rolled out - to have the option rolling back if something should stop working (in fact, itās also a topic when you notice that an integration stopped working properly)ā¦
Create regular backups of the VM my homeAssistant is running on - in Proxmox, and store them on an external drive.
Optional (but recommended backup strategy) - create a copy of the backup on another location outside your homeā¦
ā also, I moved the recorder to MariaDB, running in another container in my proxmox - so it is completely seperated from HomeAssistant (not running as addon, etc.)
With the Backups created in Proxmox, also backups of the Database will be created regularely.
Especially when running HA on a RPI with SD Card, I would recommend to check what exactly you can outsource to reduce the load on the SD card.
The RPI should be fine as a hosting system for the Software itselfā¦
As far as I got, it should nowadays be possible to attach SSDs and other storage to the RPI - so MAYBE, it would work to have HomeAssistant running on the SD Card and using an additional storage for backups and the Database?
I donāt know - this might be an option the developers needs to consider to implement in the configuration?
But at allā¦ this is a different topic and not related to the 2023.3 Dialog update discussion 
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risking posting one more off-topic reply regarding limited SD life on raspberry pi: rpis from 3b+ and on are able to boot from usb via an uption in the official imager. Iāve had great results using a Samsung Fit Plus 256GB 300mbit/s micro thumbstick (MUF-256AB) which has been much more reliable so far, and is even faster than the built in sd card reader when connected to a pi 4 usb3
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You can already do this by going into the Setting ā System ā Storage and clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner and selecting āMove Data Diskā.
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oh, thatās great
Never had to search for such an option, but I think - thatās something we REALLY should highlight to any newcommer.
Thatās an important feature when it comes to all those topics like backup, file-corruption due to a broken SD card and so on.
Iām running HA on a Pi4 on a SSD connected via USB, runs smoothly.
Before I was running it on an SD-Card for 4 years without any issue, nothing outsourced. There are better and worse SD-Cards on the market, at least in theory itās nowadays difficult to reach the max write cycles in normal operation
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I never knew about the āMove Data Diskā option, thanks!!
Any idea where this might be documented? Which directories are redirected to the other location? I assume config and possibly backup but Iād like to know what to expect before attempting it.
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same here with Z-wave adapter / stick.
remove the USB device, restart host and plug back in. Worked for me.
Before first time installing HA, I was lucky to read a recommendation to use Proxmox, even if HA would be the only āactualā system there. The reason was: easy backups and restore. It was a great advice; Proxmox needs little resources (4GB RAM is just fine for it+HA), and is very easy to install/manage. Storing ~3GB full HA backup over fiber connection takes about 6 minutes (on HP T620). Iāve just set Proxmox to auto backup every night, and those backups saved me a few times already, mostly from my own screwups 
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the other benefits are:
- move your āaddonsā to their own dedicated machine, to keep them independend of your HA.
- move your recorder database to a more advnaced database without relying on any HA Addonā¦
so, you wonāt be affected by updates that might crash your āimportantā addon which is responsible for hosting half of your smarthome devices (because you donāt use the cloud)ā¦
Since Iāve decided for this method, I reduced the impact of ābreaking changesā by A LOTā¦
Light Dialogs
Either give us the option to switch back or set the things we want to see! The amount of taps/clicks now necessary to set up a scene with multiple lights is straight up silly.
Even using a Galaxy S5 Mini I had no issue with the previous dialog layout - now it more than doubled or tripled the time setting lights. This is not a smart change for a smart home.
On the other hand if we would be able to implement those sliders into lovelace cards that would be lovely. the design of sliders/faders is not the issue but the separation into multiple tabs.
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