How to Restore an Automatic Backup on Your Space Engineers Server

Space Engineers automatically creates a backup of your world on your server every time it saves. This lets you roll your world back to an earlier state, for example if a ship was accidentally destroyed or something went wrong in the world. These automatic backups are independent of the dashboard backups you create via Create backup.

How to find the automatic backups

Your world is located on your server in the /config/Saves/World/ folder. You can find the automatic backups in the subfolder:

/config/Saves/World/Backup/

There is a separate folder for each backup. Its name is the time of the backup in the format YYYY-MM-DD HHmmss. Your server created the folder 2026-09-27 174500, for example, on September 27, 2026 at 17:45:00. The time is based on the server's system time and may therefore differ from your local time.

Each backup folder contains a copy of all files located directly in /config/Saves/World/:

• Sandbox.sbc and Sandbox_config.sbc with the world settings and the mod list
• SANDBOX_0_0_0_.sbs and SANDBOX_0_0_0_.sbsB5 with the ships, stations, player characters and other objects in the world
• the .vx2 files of the planets and asteroids
• depending on the world, the preview image thumb.jpg and further files whose names start with gs-

The server does not include subfolders such as Storage, where some mods keep their data.

Your server creates a new backup as soon as it has successfully saved the world. It saves automatically at the interval set in the Automatic Backup Interval field in the Settings of the dashboard (default: every 5 minutes). The newest backup therefore always matches the most recently saved state of your world.

Note

With the default values, your server keeps only the last 5 backups and deletes the oldest one with every new backup. The automatic backups therefore only reach back about 25 minutes of server uptime. For older states you need a dashboard backup. To learn how to keep more automatic backups, see Change the number of backups.

How to restore a backup

Warning

Restoring resets the entire world to the state of the backup. Everything that has happened in the world since then is lost. Since the player characters and their inventories are also stored in the world, this affects all players.

1. Stop the server
   Stop your server via the dashboard. While it is running, it saves regularly and would write its current state over the restored backup in the process.

2. Back up the current state
   Create a backup via the dashboard so you can return to the current state if needed.

3. Connect via SFTP
   Connect to your server via SFTP and open the following directory:

   /config/Saves/World/Backup/

4. Choose a backup
   Use the timestamp in the folder name to find the backup with the state you want to restore, for example 2026-09-27 174500. Keep in mind that the newest backup matches your current state.

5. Download the backup
   Download the chosen backup folder to your PC. This keeps the backup on the server.

6. Delete the current world files
   Go to the /config/Saves/World/ folder and delete all files located directly in this folder. Only delete files, not the Backup folder and not any other subfolders such as Storage.

7. Upload the backup files
   Upload all files from the downloaded backup folder directly into /config/Saves/World/, not as an additional subfolder. Afterwards, Sandbox.sbc must be located directly in /config/Saves/World/ next to the Backup folder.

   Important

   Always replace the complete set of files from a single backup and never mix files from different backups. If a SANDBOX_0_0_0_.sbsB5 is present in the folder, the server loads this file instead of SANDBOX_0_0_0_.sbs. So if you only restore the .sbs and leave the newer .sbsB5 in place, the server keeps loading the newer state.

8. Start the server
   Start your server and check in the game that the desired state was loaded.

Note

In the file browser of the dashboard, you can also move the files in step 7 directly from the backup folder to /config/Saves/World/ instead of downloading and uploading them again. However, the chosen backup no longer exists afterwards. You can then delete the empty backup folder.

The backup also brings back the world settings and the mod list from Sandbox_config.sbc as they were at the time of the backup. If you have added mods since then, add them again (see Add mods). The dashboard writes the values from its Settings, for example Game Mode and Max Players, into the world on every start anyway. Admins and banned players you entered in the /config/SpaceEngineers-Dedicated.cfg file (see Add admins and Kick and ban players) are stored outside the world folder and stay unchanged. Ranks you assigned directly in the game via Promote, on the other hand, are stored in the world. After the restore, they match the state of the backup again.

Tip

As soon as your server is running again, it creates a new backup every time it saves and deletes the oldest ones in the process. If you want to try several backups one after another, download the entire Backup folder to your PC first.

If the server does not start or you do not see the expected state in the game, stop it right away so that it does not delete any more backups when it saves. Then check whether Sandbox.sbc is located directly in /config/Saves/World/ and did not accidentally end up in a subfolder. If the backup still cannot be loaded, restore the dashboard backup from step 2 and try again with a different automatic backup.

Change the number of backups

The number of automatic backups your server keeps is set by the MaxBackupSaves value in your world's Sandbox_config.sbc file (default: 5, allowed values are 0 to 1000). The dashboard does not overwrite this value.

1. Stop the server
   Stop your server via the dashboard. A running server can overwrite your change when it saves or stops.

2. Create a backup
   Create a backup or download a copy of the Sandbox_config.sbc file. This lets you restore the previous state if something goes wrong while editing.

3. Connect via SFTP
   Connect to your server via SFTP or use the file browser in the dashboard.

4. Open the configuration file
   Open the file:

   /config/Saves/World/Sandbox_config.sbc

5. Change the value
   Find the line with MaxBackupSaves in the <Settings> block and enter the desired number, for example:

   <MaxBackupSaves>12</MaxBackupSaves>

6. Start the server
   Save the file and start your server. If the line Sandbox world configuration file found, overriding checkpoint settings. appears in the console while the world is loading, the server has applied your Sandbox_config.sbc.

You can roughly estimate how far back the backups reach: number of backups × Automatic Backup Interval. With 12 backups and the default interval of 5 minutes, the backups reach back about one hour. A longer interval also extends this period, but the server then saves less often (see Set up automatic backups).

Warning

If you set MaxBackupSaves to 0, the server no longer creates automatic backups and deletes the entire Backup folder with all existing backups the next time it saves.

Note

Change the value in your world's Sandbox_config.sbc and not in SpaceEngineers-Dedicated.cfg. There it only applies to newly created worlds. Each backup contains a copy of all your world's files including the .vx2 files and takes up roughly as much storage space as they do. More backups therefore need correspondingly more storage space.

Important

Make sure the XML stays valid when editing. If Sandbox_config.sbc is invalid, the server ignores the entire file without showing an error message in the console. It then uses the settings from Sandbox.sbc and overwrites Sandbox_config.sbc the next time it saves. Your changes are lost in the process. If the line from step 6 is missing after the start, stop the server, restore your copy of the file and change the value again. For more on editing the world settings, see Change world settings.