Restore a Proxmox Container Backup via CLI (When the Container Is Gone)
Restoring through the GUI doesn't work after the container has been deleted. Sometimes you'll get errors and be forced to use special options via the CLI.
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Find the original backup file by looking in Datacenter -> Storage. In this case it's a Directory-type storage pointing to
/zfs1/Backups/pve1.(If it was a PBS backup, we have to do something different — document it here once you figure it out.)
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Find the original backup file in the
/dumpdir in the storage dir. -
Restore the backup:
pct restore <containerId> <pathToBackupArchive> \--storage <nameOfTargetStorage> -
If you get an error like
Cannot write: No space left on device, add a parameter to specify the destination filesystem size in GB:--rootfs <sizeInGiB>For example (this worked last time):
pct restore 160 vzdump-lxc-160-2026_03_01-22_35_26.tar.zst \--rootfs 32 \--storage data2