How do I recover a deleted Droplet?

When a Droplet is deleted, you can recover it depending on how well protected the data was prior to the deletion.

If you had taken a snapshot of your Droplet prior to deletion, then the snapshot should still be available in your account. You can create a new Droplet based on the snapshot image in the DigitalOcean Control Panel. Snapshots contain the data your Droplet contained at the time the snapshot was taken.

If you had signed up for the automated weekly backup service, you may still have backups available. Because the weekly backup service is an add-on service, it is also scheduled for deletion when the Droplet is deleted, but unlike the Droplet, which is deleted immediately, the backups are scheduled for deletion at any point within the next 24 hours. For example, if you delete a Droplet at 10:00pm, the backups may be deleted at 12:00am, two hours after you deleted the Droplet. Please open a ticket with our support team as soon as possible so that we can determine if you have backups available.

If you were not using either of those services, then we do not have a backup of your Droplet’s data available on our system. In this scenario, you would need rely on any manual backups you have created and stored on your local computer.

Related Topics

How can I destroy my Droplets while maintaining my backups?

Destroying a Droplet destroys the backups along with it. You’ll want to preserve your backups first.

Can I download a backup or snapshot?

You cannot currently download DigitalOcean backups or snapshots, but you can use third-party tools to save your data locally.

How do I manually back up my Droplet?

You can manually back up a Droplet using DigitalOcean snapshots or backups or, alternatively, using a third-party tool like rsync or SFTP.