DOKK / manpages / debian 13 / borgbackup-is-borgbackup2 / borg-recreate.1.en
BORG-RECREATE(1) borg backup tool BORG-RECREATE(1)

borg-recreate - Re-create archives

borg [common options] recreate [options] [PATH...]

Recreate the contents of existing archives.

recreate is a potentially dangerous function and might lead to data loss (if used wrongly). BE VERY CAREFUL!

Important: Repository disk space is not freed until you run borg compact.

--exclude, --exclude-from, --exclude-if-present, --keep-exclude-tags and PATH have the exact same semantics as in "borg create", but they only check for files in the archives and not in the local file system. If PATHs are specified, the resulting archives will only contain files from these PATHs.

Note that all paths in an archive are relative, therefore absolute patterns/paths will not match (--exclude, --exclude-from, PATHs).

--chunker-params will re-chunk all files in the archive, this can be used to have upgraded Borg 0.xx archives deduplicate with Borg 1.x archives.

USE WITH CAUTION. Depending on the PATHs and patterns given, recreate can be used to delete files from archives permanently. When in doubt, use --dry-run --verbose --list to see how patterns/PATHS are interpreted. See list_item_flags in borg create for details.

The archive being recreated is only removed after the operation completes. The archive that is built during the operation exists at the same time at "<ARCHIVE>.recreate". The new archive will have a different archive ID.

With --target the original archive is not replaced, instead a new archive is created.

When rechunking, space usage can be substantial - expect at least the entire deduplicated size of the archives using the previous chunker params.

If your most recent borg check found missing chunks, please first run another backup for the same data, before doing any rechunking. If you are lucky, that will re-create the missing chunks. Optionally, do another borg check, to see if the chunks are still missing).

See borg-common(1) for common options of Borg commands.

paths to recreate; patterns are supported

output verbose list of items (files, dirs, ...)
only display items with the given status characters (listed in borg create --help)
do not change anything
print statistics at end

exclude paths matching PATTERN
read exclude patterns from EXCLUDEFILE, one per line
include/exclude paths matching PATTERN
read include/exclude patterns from PATTERNFILE, one per line
exclude directories that contain a CACHEDIR.TAG file ( <http://www.bford.info/cachedir/spec.html> )
exclude directories that are tagged by containing a filesystem object with the given NAME
if tag objects are specified with --exclude-if-present, don't omit the tag objects themselves from the backup archive

only consider archives matching all patterns. see "borg help match-archives".
Comma-separated list of sorting keys; valid keys are: timestamp, archive, name, id, tags, host, user; default is: timestamp
consider first N archives after other filters were applied
consider last N archives after other filters were applied
consider archives between the oldest archive's timestamp and (oldest + TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.
consider archives between the newest archive's timestamp and (newest - TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.
consider archives older than (now - TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.
consider archives newer than (now - TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.
create a new archive with the name ARCHIVE, do not replace existing archive
add a comment text to the archive
manually specify the archive creation date/time (yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss[(+|-)HH:MM] format, (+|-)HH:MM is the UTC offset, default: local time zone). Alternatively, give a reference file/directory.
select compression algorithm, see the output of the "borg help compression" command for details.
rechunk using given chunker parameters (ALGO, CHUNK_MIN_EXP, CHUNK_MAX_EXP, HASH_MASK_BITS, HASH_WINDOW_SIZE) or default to use the chunker defaults. default: do not rechunk

# Create a backup with little but fast compression
$ borg create archive /some/files --compression lz4
# Then compress it - this might take longer, but the backup has already completed,
# so no inconsistencies from a long-running backup job.
$ borg recreate -a archive --recompress --compression zlib,9
# Remove unwanted files from all archives in a repository.
# Note the relative path for the --exclude option - archives only contain relative paths.
$ borg recreate --exclude home/icke/Pictures/drunk_photos
# Change archive comment
$ borg create --comment "This is a comment" archivename ~
$ borg info -a archivename
Name: archivename
Fingerprint: ...
Comment: This is a comment
...
$ borg recreate --comment "This is a better comment" -a archivename
$ borg info -a archivename
Name: archivename
Fingerprint: ...
Comment: This is a better comment
...


borg-common(1), borg-patterns(1), borg-placeholders(1), borg-compression(1)

The Borg Collective

2025-08-04