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Your First Backup with Restic

Scope: install restic, create a repository (the place backups live), and take your first snapshot (one backed-up state of your files, frozen in time). Every command below was run for real, with restic 0.19.1 on Linux.

Install

  • Linux: your distribution's package manager (apt install restic, dnf install restic, pacman -S restic), or the single self-contained binary from restic's GitHub releases — restic is one file, no dependencies.
  • macOS: brew install restic.
  • Windows: winget install restic.restic, or the same single binary. (Documented — this guide's runs were on Linux.)

Check:

restic version

restic 0.19.1 compiled with go1.26.4 on linux/amd64

(Your exact version will differ; any recent version behaves the same for everything in this guide.)

The mental model

Three words run everything:

  • A repository is a folder (on a backup drive, another machine, or cloud storage) where restic stores backups in its own encrypted, chopped-up format. You don't browse it by hand; restic reads it back for you.
  • A snapshot is one backup run: the state of your folders at that moment. Every run adds a snapshot. Snapshots are cheap because they share unchanged data — more in History and pruning.
  • The password encrypts the repository. There is no reset and no recovery. The encryption chapter is short and worth reading twice.

Step 1: create the repository

Point RESTIC_REPOSITORY at the backup location and RESTIC_PASSWORD at your password (using environment variables keeps them out of every command you type):

export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/mnt/backup-drive/laptop-restic
export RESTIC_PASSWORD='a long password you have written down'
restic init

created restic repository 3d4bee6ff6 at /mnt/backup-drive/laptop-restic

Please note that knowledge of your password is required to access
the repository. Losing your password means that your data is
irrecoverably lost.

restic is not being dramatic. That warning is literal.

The repository can also live on another machine over SSH (sftp:user@server:/path) or in cloud storage (S3, Backblaze B2, and more) — same commands, different RESTIC_REPOSITORY value. Cloud setup needs that provider's credentials and is (documented), not run here.

Step 2: back up

restic backup ~/Documents ~/Pictures

First run (real output, small test folder):

no parent snapshot found, will read all files

Files:           3 new,     0 changed,     0 unmodified
Dirs:            4 new,     0 changed,     0 unmodified
Added to the repository: 197.872 KiB (197.231 KiB stored)

processed 3 files, 195.407 KiB in 0:00
snapshot f08d32d7 saved

Read it as: everything was new, restic stored it, and the result is snapshot f08d32d7. That short ID is how you refer to this moment later.

Step 3: back up again

Change a file, add one, run the identical command:

Files:           1 new,     1 changed,     2 unmodified
Dirs:            0 new,     3 changed,     1 unmodified
Added to the repository: 2.576 KiB (1.646 KiB stored)

processed 4 files, 195.475 KiB in 0:00
snapshot 61986d36 saved

The whole folder is 195 KiB, but the second backup added only 2.6 KiB to the repository: restic splits files into chunks and stores each chunk once, so unchanged data costs nothing the second time. This is why keeping months of history is affordable — see History and pruning.

Where you are

You have an encrypted repository with two snapshots, and you can already survive "I deleted it yesterday." Next: getting files back, which is the entire point.