How to Back Up and Restore Docker Volumes

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Before you start

• A volume is storage that Docker manages for a container. Named volumes live under /var/lib/docker/volumes/<name>/_data. A bind mount is a normal folder on the server, such as ./data next to compose.yaml.
• Docker doesn’t back up volumes for you. Removing them with docker compose down -v or docker volume prune -a deletes the data for good.
• Copying a database’s files while it is running can give you a broken copy. Stop the app first, or dump the database with its own tool.
• A backup on the same disk doesn’t survive a disk failure or a rebuild. Copy the archives off the server, for example with rclone or restic.

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How to find the volumes to back up

docker volume ls
docker inspect wordpress-db-1 --format '{{ json .Mounts }}'

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How to back up a Docker volume

mkdir -p ~/backups

cd ~/wordpress
docker compose stop

docker run --rm -v wordpress_db:/data:ro -v ~/backups:/backup alpine:3.24 \
  tar czf /backup/wordpress_db-2026-11-04.tar.gz -C /data .

docker compose start

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How to check the backup worked

ls -lh ~/backups
tar tzf ~/backups/wordpress_db-2026-11-04.tar.gz | head

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How to restore a Docker volume

cd ~/wordpress
docker compose stop

docker volume create wordpress_db

docker run --rm -v wordpress_db:/data -v ~/backups:/backup:ro alpine:3.24 \
  tar xzf /backup/wordpress_db-2026-11-04.tar.gz -C /data

docker compose up -d

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How to back up a database without stopping it

cd ~/wordpress
docker compose exec -T db sh -c 'mariadb-dump -u"$MARIADB_USER" -p"$MARIADB_PASSWORD" "$MARIADB_DATABASE"' > ~/backups/wordpress-2026-11-04.sql

docker compose exec -T db sh -c 'mariadb -u"$MARIADB_USER" -p"$MARIADB_PASSWORD" "$MARIADB_DATABASE"' < ~/backups/wordpress-2026-11-04.sql

cd ~/myapp
docker compose exec -T db pg_dump -U postgres -d myapp > ~/backups/myapp-2026-11-04.sql

docker compose exec -T db psql -U postgres -d myapp < ~/backups/myapp-2026-11-04.sql

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How to back up all volumes every night

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail
BACKUP_DIR=/root/backups
DATE=$(date +%F)
mkdir -p "$BACKUP_DIR"
for VOL in $(docker volume ls -q); do
  docker run --rm -v "$VOL":/data:ro -v "$BACKUP_DIR":/backup alpine:3.24 \
    tar czf "/backup/${VOL}-${DATE}.tar.gz" -C /data .
done
find "$BACKUP_DIR" -name '*.tar.gz' -mtime +7 -delete

15 3 * * * /usr/local/bin/backup-docker-volumes.sh

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Frequently asked questions

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Can I just copy /var/lib/docker/volumes?

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How do I move volumes to another server?

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Does a VPS backup include my Docker volumes?

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Why alpine and not ubuntu?

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