Most people find out they have no backup at the worst possible moment: the SD card dies, an update goes wrong, or someone deletes the wrong thing, and they open Settings → System → Backups to find it empty. Or they find one backup, from the day they installed Home Assistant two years ago, sitting on the same disk that just failed.
If you're reading this before anything has gone wrong, good. This is the one fault on this site that costs nothing while it's there and everything once it matters.
Why it happens
Home Assistant did not make backups automatically for most of its life. Until the backup system was rebuilt in early 2025, a backup was something you had to remember to take, or set up with an automation or a community add-on. Plenty of installs from before then still have nothing configured, because nothing ever asked.
There are three quieter versions of the same problem:
The backups are all on the same machine. One failed disk takes Home Assistant and every recovery point with it.
The backups are encrypted and nobody kept the key. Recent versions encrypt backups by default. An archive without its encryption key cannot be restored, so it isn't a backup at all.
The backups can't be seen. On a Container or Core install there is no Supervisor, so some tools (ours included) can't list your backups through the usual door. That doesn't mean you have none, but it does mean you should go and look.
When our check can't read the backup list, it says so rather than guessing. This is what it reported on a demonstration instance:
What the check could and could not see about backups
Backups could not be inspected (no Supervisor access with this token). Whether this system has a working backup is UNKNOWN - assume it does not until proven otherwise.
No Supervisor (Home Assistant Container): add-on management, full system backups and host control are unavailable.
Create a backup on Home Assistant Container 2026.8.2 -> ACCEPTED: the check can prove this change is justified
Demonstration instance: a disposable Home Assistant with made-up entities, run on our own test bench. Not a customer's house. The text in the box is exactly what the service's check and safety rules produced on it.
"Unknown" is treated the same as "none" until you've proven otherwise, and that's the right way to treat it on your own system too.
How to fix it yourself
This takes about ten minutes on any install from 2025.1 onwards, including Container and Core.
Open the backup settings. Go to Settings → System → Backups. If you've never been here, Home Assistant will offer to set up automatic backups. Accept, or choose Configure automatic backups if you've dismissed it before.
Save the encryption key before anything else. Home Assistant will show you an emergency kit containing your backup encryption key. Download it and store it somewhere that is not your Home Assistant machine: a password manager is ideal. Without this key, every backup you are about to make is useless. Keep the key and the backups apart, because a downloaded backup plus its key is your whole house's configuration, including passwords and tokens.
Choose a schedule. Daily is right for almost everyone. Set it to keep at least three copies, so one bad night doesn't overwrite your only good one.
Choose what goes in. Include Home Assistant settings, always. Include the history database unless it is enormous (if it is, see our guide to an oversized database first). On Home Assistant OS and Supervised, include your apps (previously called add-ons) and their data too.
Add a location that is not this machine. This is the step people skip, and it's the one that matters. Under backup locations you can add a network share (on Home Assistant OS, Settings → System → Storage → Add network storage), a cloud location offered by an integration you have installed, or Home Assistant Cloud if you subscribe to it. Tick at least one off-box location alongside the local one.
Take one now. Don't wait for tonight. Choose Backup now, let it finish, and confirm it appears in the list with a sensible size (a few megabytes is a warning sign that something was left out).
Check you can actually get it back. Download that backup to your computer, and confirm you can find your emergency kit. If you have a spare machine or a virtual machine, restoring onto it once is the only real proof. Our backup and restore guide walks through a restore properly.
If you're on a version older than 2025.1, update first, and take a manual copy of your whole config folder before you do. There is no good backup story on older versions, and updating is the fix.
What to avoid
Don't rely on a git repository of your config. It is a good habit, but it deliberately leaves out the history database, the .storage folder and your secrets, which is exactly what you need back after a disk failure.
Don't delete backups by hand to save space without checking what's left. Home Assistant's scheduled clean-up will never delete your last backup; a manual delete has no such guard.
Don't assume a backup includes your history. It usually does, but it can be switched off per backup and doesn't cover an external database. Check.
Do it properly
Take a backup before anything you can't undo by writing the old value back: deleting a device or entity, removing an integration, upgrading Core or the OS. A backup taken afterwards captures the damage.
A backup lowers the risk; it isn't permission. Restoring one discards everything since it was taken and restarts Home Assistant, so decide on purpose.
The rule this service applies: a backup is offered as the first step of a plan and starts ticked, and if you approve a change that can only be undone by restoring, it's taken first whether you ticked it or not. Without a Supervisor it can only be offered on 2025.1 or later, where Home Assistant itself can make one.
Or we'll check it for you — from A$29, no subscription: we offer a backup before we change anything and tell you what we could and couldn't see about your backups. Setting up the schedule and the off-site copy is yours to do, and the steps above are all of it.
