File Recovery

Snapshots

Snapshots are read only copies of the file systems at a point in time. They are taken daily (or weekly for /nesi/nobackup) and retained for at least seven days.

Files from your home directory can be found in /home/.snapshots/ followed by a snapshot timestamp and username, e.g;

/home/.snapshots/@GMT-2025.08.04-18.00.00/$USER

And similarly for a project or nobackup directory:

/nesi/project/.snapshots/@GMT-2025.08.04-18.00.00/nesi99999/

Recovering a file or a directory from the snapshot is as simple as copying it over, e.g.

cp /nesi/nobackup/.snapshots/@GMT-2025.08.04-18.00.00/nesi99999/file.txt /nesi/nobackup/nesi99999/file.txt

Tip

For copying directories use the flag -ir or just -r if you don't want to be prompted before overwriting