Backing Up and Restoring Databases

Since the information stored in a password database is usually both sensitive and important, Password Safe provides several mechanisms for backing up and restoring password databases. This section describes how to manually make backups of your password database Password Safe can also be configured to make automatic backups of your database whenever the database is saved. Such backups are called intermediate backups, and are described here.

Make a Backup

Safely create a copy of the current password database.

Click Make Backup
Select a location for the backup file
Click Save

Note: It is strongly recommended that you make frequent backups of your password databases. This will help safeguard password lists against system crashes or corrupted files. The backup is encrypted using the same master password as the current database being backed up. In particular, via the Backups tab in the Options dialog box, you may specify how many backups to keep (we recommend a minimum of 3 to 5) and whether to use an incremental number or date/time value in the backup file name.

Restore from Backup

Restore a backed up password database file.

Click Restore from Backup
Navigate to the backup location and select the file to restore
Click Open and a password prompt will be displayed.
Enter the database password and click OK

Notes:

The restored database is not "saved" with the standard Password Safe database extension (.psafe3) until you have selected Save or Save As from the file menu. You will be prompted to "Save" the database and give it a name if you have not saved it prior to exiting the application.
In addition to the backup and restore described here, Password Safe automatically keeps a copy of the database before you save a change. The copy is in the same directory as the current database, and the name is identical, except for the extension, which is ".ibak", meaning "incremental backup", instead of ".psafe3". See here for more information about the automatic backups.