What is an FTP Snapshot?

For Cloud Sites, an FTP snapshot is a read-only image of your FTP data, taken during specific time intervals.

Snapshots are taken every 4 hours and go back 32 hours.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Snapshots ONLY include your FTP / Website content; they do NOT include your databases!

Retrieving data from FTP Snapshots is an emergency-recovery method, and is not intended to be used for general backup purposes. We strongly recommend that you utilize your own backup process using a cron script. Here are two articles to help you schedule DB backups using a cron job:

• How do I create a cron job to backup my MySQL database?
• How can I create a cron job to backup my MSSQL database?

How Do I Recover My FTP Snapshot Data?

In order to view your FTP content snapshots you must first login to your site via FTP.  For help with this, please refer to our article on Uploading content to a website using FTP

Once you are logged in to your FTP site, please go to the path of the file(s) / folder(s) you want to attempt to recover. 

Add "/.snapshot" (no quotes) to the end of the FTP path within your FTP application. This will allow you the opportunity to view the snapshots for the site. 

NOTE: You may need to execute a manual change directory command to .snapshot if you are not able to view and modify the current FTP path.

You should see the following sub-directories if successful:

..
hourly.0 -> (contains most recent hourly snapshot data)
hourly.1
hourly.2
hourly.3
hourly.4
hourly.5
hourly.6
hourly.7
hourly.8 -> (contains the oldest snapshot data available)

(Please note, the "hourly" reference here refers to the 4th hour of the individual 4 hour block captured.)

Navigate to the appropriate folder(s) that contain the data from the relevant period of time you are looking for. You will see an exact duplicate of the parent folder's data at the time the snapshot was taken. The snapshot data is read-only and you will need to download the files you need to access, and re-upload them if needed.