What a backup contains and how it is checked

A backup made from the Backup section in Admin is a single archive of one user or one team. This page lists what goes into that archive, what stays out, how Eigen checks it, and where the panel's limits are. To make or restore a backup, see Back up a user or team and Restore a user or team.

What is in a backup

One archive covers one user or one team, and nothing else on the server.

Item	In the backup?
All files in Drive	Yes
Earlier versions of a file	Yes
Trashed files	Yes
Thumbnails	Yes
Documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and boards	Yes
Chats	Yes
Mail	Yes (for a user)
Calendars	Yes
Contacts	Yes (for a user)
The account's settings	Yes
The user's profile picture	Yes (for a user)
Who each file is shared with	Yes
Files stored in S3	Yes, downloaded and included in full
Other users or teams	No
Server-wide settings	No
The server's own configuration	No

A team backup is the same shape as a user backup, minus the parts a team has no equivalent for, such as mail and contacts.

The archive file

Detail	Value
Format	.tar.zst, a compressed tar archive you can open with standard tools (tar --zstd)
Name	home-<id>-<date>-<time>.tar.zst, for example home-a1b2c3-20260911-140322.tar.zst
Where it lands	The server's backups folder, backups/ in the install folder

Files stored in an S3 bucket are downloaded and written into the archive, so a restore never depends on the bucket, its credentials, or the storage type staying the same.

How verification works

Eigen checks every archive after it is made, again whenever you click Verify, and once more at the start of every restore. Three checks run in order:

1. Files: every file in the archive has exactly the size and checksum recorded for it, and there is nothing extra.
2. Databases: each of Eigen's own databases passes an integrity check.
3. Documents: a sample of the largest documents is opened and decoded to confirm the content reads back.

Each archive shows one of three badges:

Badge	Meaning
Verified	All three checks passed. You can restore from it.
Failed	A check failed. The archive is kept for reference, but the panel will not restore from it.
Not verified	The archive has not been checked yet. This is normal for one you copied onto the server by hand.

Click Verify on any archive to run the checks again and update its badge.

Limits

Limit	Detail
Scheduling	None for one user or team. The nightly backup of the whole server holds every user and team.
Clean-up	None. Archives of one user or team and safety copies stay until you delete them.
Concurrent jobs	One at a time per user or team. A second request is refused while one runs, and while the whole-server backup copies that user or team.
Restore target	An archive restores only to the same user or team it came from.
Upload size	About 1 GB through Upload backup. For a larger archive, copy the file into the backups folder by hand.

Whole-server backup

The panel covers one user or team at a time. The owner backs up the whole server in Settings, every night or by hand, or with ./eigen backup on the server. It runs while Eigen runs, holds the server's own databases and settings as well, is checked the same way, and can go to a backup bucket off the server. See Back up and restore the whole server.

A whole-server backup holds an archive of every user and team. Copied into the backups folder, one lists in that user's or team's Backup section like any other archive. An archive out of a Light backup holds no files and no mail, and one out of a Full backup holds no files of a drive in an S3 bucket. Neither restores on its own: the row says why and offers no Restore.