ARK: SA Unofficial Server Backup Strategy

ARK: SA unofficial server backup strategy that survives Wildcard patches

Every ARK Survival Ascended unofficial server is one auto-update away from data loss. The pattern repeats on every major patch: Steam pushes a new build, the server restarts in the middle of a save, and a community comes back to a world reverted by days or a save that no longer loads. This page is the realistic backup plan operators actually need, not the one-line "remember to back up" advice that does not work in practice.

What you are actually protecting against

Four failure modes account for almost every unofficial server data loss event:

• Patch-day truncation. Wildcard pushes a patch. Steam triggers an update. The server is in the middle of a save. The shutdown is mid-write. The next start fails to load the .ark file and silently falls back to the previous full save — losing whatever has happened in the last 15 to 60 minutes of play.
• Slow file-system corruption. Mod that writes constantly + cheap disk + long uptime = a .ark with a malformed footer. The world loads, but specific structures or tribes get nulled on read.
• Player griefing. A rogue admin issues DestroyAll on a target tribe. Or wipes a tribe's structures from rcon. Detected too late to roll back without losing other players' progress.
• Worker process drift. The server process accumulates state in memory that diverges from disk. A power outage at the wrong moment loses everything since the last full save.

A backup strategy that addresses only one of these is the kind of strategy that fails in production. A working one addresses all four.

The three-tier backup model

This is what reputable ARK hosts run by default. If you self-host, replicate it:

Tier 1: server-side rolling snapshots (5-minute resolution)

The server's own anti-corruption backups, written automatically when the world saves. Set with:

[ServerSettings]
RCONEnabled=True
RCONPort=27020

# Default save interval is 15 minutes. Faster = smaller loss window, more disk wear
AutoSavePeriodMinutes=15

The server writes backups to ShooterGame/Saved/SavedArks/<MapName>/ as files named <MapName>_AntiCorruptionBackup.ark and the rolling .ark + .tribe + .arkprofile set.

These are the fastest recovery path (drag a backup file into the active save name, restart). They do not survive disk corruption or accidental deletion because they live on the same disk as the live save.

Tier 2: scheduled local archives (daily, 7-day retention)

Once a day, archive the entire Saved/ directory to a sibling location with timestamp:

0 4 * * * cd /home/u<port>/arksa/data/ShooterGame && tar czf "Saved_$(date +\%F).tar.gz" Saved/ && find . -name "Saved_*.tar.gz" -mtime +7 -delete

This runs at 4am local time, compresses the save directory, and prunes archives older than 7 days. A server panel job scheduler does the same job through the UI if you don't want a cron.

Recovery from a tier-2 archive is a 30-second copy followed by a restart. Good for "we discovered the corruption two days later" cases that tier-1 cannot help.

Tier 3: off-server archive (weekly, indefinite retention)

The first two tiers live on the same machine as the server. A disk failure or accidental rm -rf takes them out together. Once a week, sync the most recent tier-2 archive to an off-server location:

0 5 * * 0 rclone copy /home/u<port>/arksa/data/ShooterGame/Saved_$(date -d 'yesterday' +\%F).tar.gz remote:arksa-backups/

"remote:" can be S3, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, your own NAS — anything rclone supports. The point is geographic separation. If your server host has an incident, this is the only tier that survives.

What to back up beyond the save

The Saved/ directory captures world state. A full restore also needs config. Add these to your tier-2 archive:

• ShooterGame/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/Game.ini — sandbox settings, multipliers, engram overrides
• ShooterGame/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/GameUserSettings.ini — server name, password, rcon, base rates
• ShooterGame/Saved/Config/LinuxServer/Engine.ini — any custom engine tweaks
• StartArkServer.sh or equivalent — your launch command, including mod list, cluster ID, ports
• ShooterGame/Mods/ — installed mods (optional; Steam can redownload, but archived versions help when a workshop mod is removed by its author)

If you cluster, also back up the cluster directory: cluster_shared/ or wherever -ClusterDirOverride points.

Pre-patch-day procedure

When a major ARK patch is announced (Studio Wildcard usually posts 24 to 48 hours ahead), run this before the patch lands:

1. Take a manual full save (RCON: SaveWorld) on every server in the cluster.
2. Trigger a tier-2 archive immediately, do not wait for the daily cron.
3. Verify the archive is non-zero size and contains the .ark file (do not skip — silent zero-byte archives are a thing).
4. If you can, disable Steam auto-update on the server until you have a maintenance window. Update manually after verifying the patch is stable on a test instance.

How to recover from each tier

What we run on Supercraft ARK: Survival Ascended servers

All three tiers ship enabled by default. Tier-1 anti-corruption backups every save. Tier-2 archives kept rolling for 5 to 7 days, stored on a separate disk from the live game data. Tier-3 off-node weekly archives kept on cold storage. The panel exposes a Backup Now button for pre-patch manual snapshots, and rollback to any tier-2 point is one click.

If you self-host, the principle is the same: layered defenses, multiple disks, off-machine archive. The cost is small disk space and ten minutes of cron setup. The cost of skipping it is months of player progress.

Browse ARK: Survival Ascended plans — daily and weekly backups included on every tier.

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