Guide: Home Assistant Core - Restoring a Backup

Community Guides
,
1

Home Assistant Core does not have an automated retort process and must be restored manually. These steps work if you’re restoring from any install type of Home Assistant to Core. Personally, i’ve used this to convert my setup of Home Assistant Docker to Home Assistant Core

To do this:

  1. Login to Home Assistant
  2. Go to Settings > System > Backups
  3. Click Create Backup - It will take a few minutes depending on your setup
  4. Once the backup is created, click the Download button against your backup and download to your computer
  5. A file will be created such as “core_2022_12_9.tar” - At this point you can either untar and gunzip the files or upload the files and uncompress the files on your Home Assistant. You can do this a few ways, my recommendation is to enable SAMBA.
    1. Untar this file and folder will be created with a backup metadata file and a homeassistant.tar.gz - This second file contains the backup data
    2. Gunzip homeassistant.tar.gz and a data folder is created - This is where your configuration backup now resides
    3. The data folder contains the backup - If you’ve uncompressed on your computer, copy the folder over, don’t just copy the files as there are hidden directories in this folder.
  6. Change directory to /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant
  7. Copy the files from the data directory to /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant: sudo cp -rf [path to data] .
  8. Copy the .storage folder to /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant : sudo cp -rf [path to data/.storage] .
  9. Copy the .cloud folder to /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant : sudo cp -rf [path to data/.cloud] .
  10. The most important thing to note is the .storage directory that’s hidden is copied over as well - This contains your dashboard data

If you choose to copy the files and directories under data themselves, be sure to show hidden files:

macOS:

  • Open the data folder
  • Press Command + Shift + . (the period key) - This shows hidden files
  • Copy the files over
  • Press Command + Shift + . (the period key) - This hides the hidden files

Windows:

  • Open the data folder in the File Explorer
  • Select View > Show > Hidden items This shows hidden files
  • Copy the files over
  • Select View > Show > Hidden items This hides the hidden files
5 Likes
3

Well, I am done with HA. It’s garbage. An update deleted all my config and reset me to beginning. I have tried for hours, including this tutorial, to no avail. They have a LOT of work to do. Garbage product. Sorry.

To have a backup that does nothing and cannot be restored is utter silliness.

2 Likes
4

let me remind you some things…
a) couple of hundred of thousand users are very happy with the software. Perhaps your inability to do something right is the reason of your frustration.
b) it is for free
c) no need to tell us that you are done with the product. It is not an airport.

2 Likes
5

You write there is no automated restore, but why the start screen of a new HA lets you select a a full backup to restore?

6

Read the topic: Home Assistant Core, that is a Home Assistant installed in a .venv, python only. Only HA OS and HA Supervised show a restore on the start screen.