Minecraft World Backup and Restore
How to back up and restore your world, what each file does, and what gets overwritten.
World File Structure
A Minecraft world is stored in a folder named after the level-name setting (default: world). Inside:
level.dat - World metadata: seed, spawn point, gamerules, world border.
region/ - Overworld chunk data (r.x.z.mca files).
DIM-1/ - Nether dimension (contains its own region/ folder).
DIM1/ - End dimension (contains its own region/ folder).
playerdata/ - Player inventories, positions, health, XP.
data/ - Maps, scoreboards, saved structures, village data.
datapacks/ - Installed datapacks.
Paper/Spigot servers use separate folders: world/, world_nether/, world_the_end/. Each has the same internal structure.
Creating a Backup
Via the Backups tab: click "Create Backup Now", optionally with a label and a note. GameGrid captures your world folders, server.properties, the player lists, your plugins or mods, and on Paper the bukkit/spigot/Paper config files. Manual backups count against your 30 GB manual quota, shown as a bar at the top of the tab.
Automatic backups run daily, and before an update and before a reinstall. They are listed separately, kept on a rolling retention policy that the tab states, and do not count against your quota.
If you renamed level-name, the platform backs up your renamed world folders too, not just the default "world".
Manual backup via Files tab: Stop the server, then copy the world folder(s) to your computer. Don't copy while the server is running - you'll get a corrupted backup.
Live backup without stopping: Run /save-off in the Console tab, then /save-all flush. Copy the world folder. Then run /save-on. This is safe but slightly riskier than stopping the server first.
Restoring a Backup
Via the Backups tab: find the backup and click "Restore". The server is stopped, restored and started again for you. If players are connected you are asked to confirm first, and a copy of the current state is taken immediately beforehand so a bad restore is itself reversible. This is the recommended method.
Manual restore: Stop the server. Delete or rename the current world folder. Upload your backup world folder. Restart the server.
Single dimension reset: To reset just the Nether, delete world_nether/ (Paper) or world/DIM-1/ (Vanilla). To reset the End, delete world_the_end/ or world/DIM1/. The dimension regenerates fresh on next start.
What to Back Up
World folder(s) - The most important. This is your world.
server.properties - Server settings.
Config files - on Paper: bukkit.yml, spigot.yml, commands.yml, permissions.yml, help.yml, and config/paper-global.yml and config/paper-world-defaults.yml. On Forge and NeoForge: user_jvm_args.txt and defaultconfigs/.
plugins/ folder - Plugin jars and their config/data folders.
mods/ folder - Mod jars (modded servers).
whitelist.json, banned-players.json, banned-ips.json, ops.json and usercache.json - the player lists. usercache.json maps UUIDs to names; without it the other three cannot resolve after a restore.
GameGrid snapshots include all of these automatically.
Changing World Seed or Type
To change the world seed: take a backup, stop the server, set level-seed in the Settings tab, delete the world, then start. On Paper that is three folders (<level-name>, <level-name>_nether and <level-name>_the_end); on Vanilla, Fabric, Forge and NeoForge it is the single <level-name> folder, which holds all three dimensions. "Delete Savegames" on the Admin tab does it for either layout.
To change world type: same sequence, setting level-type in the Settings tab instead - for example minecraft:flat.
You can't change the seed or type of an existing world. The seed and type only affect new world generation. To get a new world, you must delete the old one.