No I don’t want to do that, surely it is a simple matter of a programing option to be able to change the time, after all there is an option to select a day, what’s the difference, why make it difficult, what’s the point of the restriction?
It’s just a pointless thing to have set in stone
1 Like
Unfortunately, I have now updated to 2025.1 and am considering a downgrade (my fault, I must have misread the release notes or understood the heading “Encrypted Backups BY DEFAULT” as an option).
Am I summarizing this correctly:
- automatic backups are always encrypted?
- manually initiated backups are also encrypted?
- Addon Samba Backup will no longer work like this?
- The time of the backup is hard-coded?
Mmhh,
can I somehow create an automation that uses hassio.backup_full as the action and saves the unencrypted backup to a Samba share at a freely configurable time?
So the new “Backing Up into 2025!” function is on the verge of being unusable and I’m wondering what that has to do with “we listen to the users”.
3 Likes
wmaker, your backup observation works for me.
I will update the Core to the latest version and setup an auto backup option that way, on my Main HA system.
Thanks, for your help
Great!
Then I can give it even a better name:
actions:
- action: hassio.backup_full
metadata: {}
data:
compressed: true
homeassistant_exclude_database: false
location: SynoBackup
name: >-
Backup with no encryption {{
state_attr('update.home_assistant_core_update','installed_version') }}
{{ now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d') }}
However, the name only affects the view in HA. The file name on the share then remains random:
2 Likes
There is a database purge at around 4 am, and this backup is designed to run after that. So there is a point to it. But you are right, it should be movable.
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Also mentioned on the other thread, I do exactly that already. First of all, I maintain a copy of the “config” directory on my laptop, which I synch up as part of my routine backups. That in turn gets copied to the NAS, so there’s always another copy there. That’s backed up off-site.
But whenever I make a significant change to a .yaml file, I first copy the “old” version off to a dedicated directory, renaming it to include the date it was last changed. So I always have archival copies I can go back to.
In other words, I have no need to ever open the backup .tar file. I also have no need for it to be encrypted, but I think we’ve beaten that issue to death already.
3 Likes
For those that use the samba backup add-on, there’s a thread discussing these changes as related to that add-on here:
The existing VS Code add-on supports version control already. No reason to reinvent the wheel.
3 Likes
Off-site backups seem overkill for Home Assistant if you’re already storing the backups off-device.
I’ve got backups on device. I’ve got backups on my NAS. Something that kills both of those sets of backups will have probably destroyed most of the home or at least the electronic devices within. An offsite backup wouldn’t be useful because I’d be replacing so much stuff that it wouldn’t be helpful to do anything but restart from scratch.
Offsite backups are for things that are still relevant if the site is destroyed. Documents, records, family photos and so on. Not a home automation system that’s been tailored to a structure that’s going to need significant repairs if not a rebuild.
In any case, like many others, my primary use case for backups is rolling back if an update is broken (my fault for missing a breaking change or just a broken update to an add on or core), or digging into the file structure to recover an automation or dashboard view I want to revert to get the yaml for a copy-paste job. The encryption breaks that, and lengthens the process for restoring in the case where an update went bad.
5 Likes
Oh I’ve no intention if it already exists. I had no idea :). Thanks for the tip. I think I’ll be installing this pronto
I’m already feeling sad for all the users that will open a topic here, in full panic mode because they lost the keys to decrypt their backup. Either because they didn’t know they needed to save it, they deleted it by accident, they no longer remember where they stored it 5 years ago or the key was on the same system that had a failed HA running on it.
5 Likes
Does it work when doing changes from the UI? I do have the VS Code Add-on, but I do most of the configuration from the UI.
Hey guys!
I must say I welcome the new backup feature. It brings some functionalities that were missing previously. But it is not without it’s shortcomings.
Plus 
Backup retention
The old backup feature only allowed you to create new backups. If you wanted to automatically purge backups that you no longer needed you had to figure that out yourself. I welcome the retention feature of the new backup feature which allows me to set a number of backups to retain or number of days.
Cloud backup
This was an unexpected bonus. I usually create backups locally and than copy them to my NAS using the samba add-on. Now I could have synced that to a cloud service to adhere to the 3-2-1 best practice, but I never did. As I have the Nabu casa subscription this instantly took care of my offsite backup.
Needs improvement 
More granular backup schedule
With the old backup feature I periodically removed the backups I no longer needed. But now that we have a retention setting I maybe even want to create hourly backups to decrease my RPO (amount of data loss). The retention setting makes sure these backups don’t fill up my disk. But unfortunately the current schedule settings doesn’t allow me to set hourly automatic backups. Also I find it really annoying that the backup time is now set to 4:45 with no way to change it.
I already had a backup that failed and I suspect that this is due to everyone uploading their offsite backup to Nabu casa which caused an unintentional distributed denial of service.
Configurable database purge
I read somewhere in this thread the 4:45 time was chosen because a scheduled database purge occurs at 04:00. It would be nice if this was configurable so you can align this with your backup schedule. Or maybe even have the purge triggered by a backup.
Encryption toggle
It would be nice if you have the ability to toggle encryption for those of us that don’t use a cloud service to store an offsite copy of home assistant.
Decryption tool
Given the open nature of the home assistant ecosystem a documented way of decrypting the backup yourself is a must in IMHO.
8 Likes
hm…
Those two are possible for a long time, using samba backup addon. But even without this addon saving to a attached network drive was possible before.
BTW… just 5 minutes ago it happened again: i needed a couple lines of my code from esphome’s yaml (yeah, i fu**ed up…wasn’t the first, won’t be the last…). I simply opened my backup (created old way) and copied old version back. This is not possible with new backups, as dev’s think it’s not needed, obviously…
Or just simply make the MANUAL BACKUP
- Encryption Free…
- Which would work for Me
(a slogan to remember)
2 Likes
MANUAL BACKUP is still there but now it involves more mouse clicks vs old version. And of cause newly created manual backups are now encrypted
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Yes, as it just monitors changes to the files.
How? I mean, you have to initialize a repository?
After modify an automation through the UI, you need to go to the add-on and commit changes?
You have to connect to a GitHub account or install git server?
For your information, I now only use the automatic backups for the Nabu Casa cloud!
Since my VM just run full after 3 backups and no Option to Change time because my NAS ist off at night to save energy.
Maybe the time can be changed soon… then I’ll can use it for the NAS too.
But I also have 2 daily and 1 weekly backup at 3 different locations via Proxmox.
But my test HA (RPi4) hast effectly no automatic Backups:
- no Nabu Casa Cloud account for it
- Backup on SD (is no Backup, i cant reach it when the SD fails)
- NAS is offline at night
And to make it even worse:
- no Backup when I update something
if you create it over the action its not encrypted (yet)
action: hassio.backup_full