How to Create or Restore Droplets from Snapshots

Snapshots are on-demand disk images of DigitalOcean Droplets and volumes saved to your account. Use them to create new Droplets and volumes with the same contents.

You can use any snapshot created from a Droplet to create new Droplets in any region where the snapshot is available.

You can also use snapshots to restore a Droplet to the point in time when the snapshot was taken. This can be useful for restoring files that were accidentally deleted or to revert to a known-good Droplet to recover from accidental configuration changes.

Create New Droplets from a Snapshot

To create a Droplet from a snapshot, click the Create menu and select Droplets. On the Droplet creation page, in the Choose an image section, click Snapshots, and then click the snapshot you want to use.

Continue creating the Droplet normally by selecting the Droplet size, region, and any additional options.

Note

You must select a disk size equal to or larger than the Droplet used to create the snapshot.

Finally, click Create to create a Droplet based on the selected snapshot.

Restore a Snapshot on an Existing Droplet

To replace all the data on an existing Droplet with the image of one of its snapshots, click Images from the top menu of the DigitalOcean Control Panel. This takes you to a list of all the snapshots available in your account.

Find the snapshot you want to restore the Droplet from and open its More menu, then select Restore Droplet. A Restore Droplet window confirms that the existing Droplet will be replaced with the older snapshot image.

Click Restore Droplet to restore the Droplet from the selected snapshot.