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OpenClaw Backup Recovery

OpenClaw Backup & Recovery Guide (2026) 💾 Backup & Recovery OpenClaw Backup &Recovery Guide What to back up, how often, and exactly how to restore your OpenClaw agent after a…

OpenClaw Backup & Recovery Guide (2026)
💾 Backup & Recovery

OpenClaw Backup &
Recovery Guide

What to back up, how often, and exactly how to restore your OpenClaw agent after a server failure — without losing conversation history or workspace data.

What to Back Up

The Three Critical Directories

OpenClaw stores all stateful data in three locations. Back up these — everything else is recreatable from scratch.

PathWhat’s InsideSizeBackup Frequency
~/openclaw/data/.openclaw/Conversation history, memory, workspace state, channel sessions50–500 MBDaily
~/openclaw/.envAPI keys, gateway token, all configuration<5 KBEvery change
~/openclaw/docker-compose.ymlContainer configuration<2 KBEvery change
Store .env Encrypted

Your .env file contains API keys worth real money. Never store it in plain text in a public cloud location. Encrypt it before uploading: gpg --symmetric .env creates .env.gpg — upload only the encrypted version.

Automated Backup Script

Set Up Daily Automated Backups

#!/bin/bash # OpenClaw Daily Backup Script BACKUP_DIR=~/openclaw-backups DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d) ARCHIVE=”$BACKUP_DIR/openclaw-$DATE.tar.gz” mkdir -p $BACKUP_DIR # Create compressed archive of all critical data tar -czf $ARCHIVE \ ~/openclaw/data/.openclaw/ \ ~/openclaw/.env \ ~/openclaw/docker-compose.yml \ ~/openclaw/update.sh # Keep only last 14 days of backups find $BACKUP_DIR -name “openclaw-*.tar.gz” -mtime +14 -delete echo “Backup complete: $ARCHIVE” du -sh $ARCHIVE
# Make executable and schedule daily at 2 AM chmod +x ~/openclaw/backup.sh echo “0 2 * * * ~/openclaw/backup.sh >> ~/openclaw/backup.log 2>&1” | crontab –
Offsite Backup (Strongly Recommended)

Local backups don’t protect you if your VPS provider has a data centre incident. Use rclone to sync backups to a free cloud storage provider (Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, or even Google Drive) after each backup run.

# Install rclone and configure once curl https://rclone.org/install.sh | sudo bash rclone config # Follow prompts to add your cloud storage # Add to backup script — sync after archive rclone copy $ARCHIVE remote:openclaw-backups/
Recovery

How to Restore After a Server Failure

  • 1

    Provision a new VPS

    Same specs or better. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Install Docker following the installation guide.

  • 2

    Deploy fresh OpenClaw

    Clone your docker-compose.yml to the new server and run docker compose pull.

  • 3

    Restore your backup archive

    scp openclaw-backups/openclaw-LATEST.tar.gz user@NEW_SERVER:~/ ssh user@NEW_SERVER mkdir -p ~/openclaw && cd ~/ tar -xzf openclaw-LATEST.tar.gz
  • 4

    Start OpenClaw

    cd ~/openclaw && docker compose up -d
  • 5

    Verify data integrity

    Message your agent on Telegram/WhatsApp. It should remember your previous conversations and have all skills intact.

Backups In Place

With automated backups and a recovery plan, you’re protected against the worst-case scenarios.

Set Up Monitoring →Migration Guide