Backup and restore

What is backed up

Your collection, locations, decks and settings are one SQLite file: collection.db, in the data folder. That file is the only thing worth backing up. The card catalog and the cached images are downloaded again whenever they are missing.

Automatic backups

Every night at MAGICDB_BACKUP_HOUR (4:00 by default) AMTG writes, in the backup folder:

• collection-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.db — a complete copy of the database, checked before it counts as a backup;
• collection-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.csv — the collection as a spreadsheet, readable without AMTG.

If the computer was off at that hour, the backup runs when it is on again. An empty collection is not backed up.

Old backups are removed automatically. What is kept:

• every backup of the last 7 days;
• the newest of each week, for the last 4 weeks;
• the newest of each month, for the last 12 months.

AMTG also saves a copy before anything risky, kept for 30 days: pre-import-…db before every import, and pre-migration-…db before upgrading the database to a newer version of the app. You can make a backup at any moment, and download any of them, from the Administration page.

Where backups go

By default, in backups inside the data folder — on the same disk as the collection. That protects you from a mistake, not from a broken disk or a stolen computer. Set MAGICDB_BACKUP_DIR to a folder that is synced or backed up somewhere else (a cloud folder, a NAS):

# Docker: mount a host folder and point the variable at it (see compose.yaml)
MAGICDB_BACKUP_DIR=/backups

rem Windows
set MAGICDB_BACKUP_DIR=D:\OneDrive\magic-db-backups
magic-db.exe

Restoring

Restoring replaces the whole collection with the one in the backup. It is done by hand, on purpose.

1. Stop AMTG (close its window, or docker compose stop).
2. In the data folder, delete collection.db-wal and collection.db-shm if they are there. They belong to the database you are replacing.
3. Copy the backup you want over collection.db:

   copy /Y backups\collection-20261112-040000.db collection.db

   cp backups/collection-20261112-040000.db collection.db

4. Start AMTG again.

With Docker and the default volume:

docker compose stop
docker compose run --rm --entrypoint sh magic-db -c \
  "rm -f /data/collection.db-wal /data/collection.db-shm && \
   cp /data/backups/collection-20261112-040000.db /data/collection.db"
docker compose start

If you only have a CSV or JSON export, start with an empty collection and bring it back with Import — see Import and export. The JSON export also restores empty locations and decks; the CSV does not.

Moving to another computer

Stop AMTG, copy collection.db (and the backups folder if you want the history) into the data folder of the new installation, and start it there. The catalog is downloaded again by itself.