I'm very new to home labs and have been running a Satisfactory dedicated server in Docker for about a month. I asked an AI tool to increase the server tick rate, and it ended up deleting the existing container and creating a new one. I don't think the world had been backed up since I uploaded it, so roughly 100 hours of progress shared with a friend may be gone. Is there any way to recover the save, or should I consider it lost?
3 Answers
Stop making changes to the machine for now. Inspect Docker’s storage and any host backup or snapshot systems, and avoid restarting or recreating containers repeatedly. On Linux, Docker data is commonly under `/var/lib/docker`, but manually browsing or recovering deleted files depends on the storage driver and filesystem. If the save is truly deleted and there is no backup, a filesystem recovery tool may be the last option, though success is not guaranteed.
Look at the original startup command or compose file and find the volume mappings. If the save directory was mapped to a host folder or named volume, recreating the container should not have deleted the world; you may only need to attach that same storage to the new container. If no persistent storage was configured, the save was probably in the container’s writable layer and recovery becomes much more difficult.
A container’s own filesystem is temporary, so recreating it can remove anything stored inside the container. Game saves need to be stored in a bind mount or Docker volume on the host. Check `docker volume ls` and inspect any volumes associated with the old server before assuming the data is gone. Also check whether the original container still appears in `docker ps -a`.
The AI tool was supposed to change the server settings, so I’ll check both the old container and any volumes before doing anything else.
Automation tools can produce a nearly correct configuration while putting the volume mount on the wrong path or changing its name. Compare the generated configuration with the server’s documentation and verify that the save folder inside the container is actually mapped to persistent storage.