# Backup from Content Directory?

**URL:** <https://forum.ghost.org/t/backup-from-content-directory/1478>\
**Category:** Developer help\
**Created:** [June 1, 2018, 7:00pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/backup-from-content-directory/1478 "2018-06-01T19:00:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nick-thompson](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/nick-thompson/32/737_2.png) [@nick-thompson](https://forum.ghost.org/u/nick-thompson)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 7:00pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/backup-from-content-directory/1478/1 "2018-06-01T19:00:17Z")

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Hi, I have a three or four year old Ghost installation that went down after my server provider updated the machine, and I’ve been unable to get it back up in its current form.

I would like to move to Ghost 1.0, but I don’t have a way of exporting my data for import into a new Ghost setup (because I can’t get it to run). I have managed to collect the `content` folder from the current installation though, is there a way to import the `content` folder into a new Ghost setup, other than manually?

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![nick-thompson](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/nick-thompson/32/737_2.png) [@nick-thompson](https://forum.ghost.org/u/nick-thompson)\
**Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 5:42pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/backup-from-content-directory/1478/2 "2018-06-04T17:42:05Z")

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Doing a little more searching today, it appears the answer would be “no”: [https://docs.ghost.org/v1.0.0/docs/migrating-to-ghost-1-0-0#section-1-backup-your-content](https://docs.ghost.org/v1.0.0/docs/migrating-to-ghost-1-0-0#section-1-backup-your-content)

So for anyone interested, I managed to find a solution by looking at the version of my ghost installation on the messed up server, and installing a local copy of that release locally. Then I took a few guesses at what Node version I was probably using around the time I set up the old server and tried the old `npm install` until I found a node version in which that command succeeded. Then I was able to get a local ghost blog at the old version running. At that point, I swapped the `ghost.db` file and restarted the server and lo and behold, it worked. I was able to log into the local installation and export a json file which imports relatively successfully to a new ghost v1.0.0+

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**Author:** ![Hannah](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/hannah/32/22_2.png) [@Hannah](https://forum.ghost.org/u/Hannah)\
**Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 5:58pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/backup-from-content-directory/1478/3 "2018-06-04T17:58:01Z")

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FYI Ghost staff aren’t really active on the weekend.

This is absolutely the best and pretty much only approach that doesn’t involve horrible data munging 👍Glad to hear you figured it out and got it working.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/ghost2/original/2X/b/ba9ce5100b8bb264586f4f572545596b2ce3f081.png) [@system](https://forum.ghost.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2018, 6:09pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/backup-from-content-directory/1478/4 "2018-06-18T18:09:08Z")

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