Question

What's the difference between snapshots and Droplet backups, how to backup and can it be downloaded?

Posted January 28, 2014 19k views
So in account control panel there is Images link on the left in menu and under that there are Snapshots and Droplet backups. Snapshot is basically snap, clone of droplet, it should be same thing as backup, right? But if it's a same thing as backup why there are backups than? What's the difference and i couldn't find anywhere option to backup droplet, just to make snapshot. And is it possible to download and keep one on my pc?
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alexandar.n
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uberdigital October 11, 2017

https://snapshooter.io/ automates snapshot backups :)

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  • snapshooter October 12, 2017

    Thank you @uberdigital link :)

    You’re correct we offer this for people who want more frequent backups of their droplets. From Hourly to Daily snapshots with daily/weekly and monthly retention policies with no limit on the number of past snapshots that can be managed.

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pablo January 28, 2014
Check out:

1.) DigitalOcean Backups and Snapshots Explained;

2.) How To Use DigitalOcean Snapshots to Automatically Backup your Droplets;

3.) How to Install Rsnapshot on Ubuntu 12.04; or

4.) How To Use Duplicity with GPG to Securely Automate Backups on Ubuntu.
How to Install Rsnapshot on Ubuntu 12.04
by Justin Ellingwood
In this article, we describe how to install and configure Rsnapshot in Ubuntu. Rsnapshot is a remote backup solution based on the rsync protocol which can be used to create scheduled, incremental backups.
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alexandar.n January 29, 2014
Thank you for your links. first one explained exactly what i wanted to clear out.
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chux18 November 29, 2015

Thay have the same output, its just that - Snapshot requires you to power off your droplet. Auto backup feature - no need to power off.

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tomw August 25, 2016

And just to verify? can a snapshot be downloaded?

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meatnordrink July 9, 2020

I believe the short answer to this is that they’re the same. The only difference is that backups happen automatically, and are standardized. You can make a snapshot whenever you want, and customize some things (such as making volume snapshots).

But if you just use the standard options, then backups are just snapshots that occur at specified intervals.

Please correct me if I’m wrong on that.

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