Persistent storage: keep files safe under /data

Your app runs in a container that is replaced on every deploy and restart. Anything written inside the container is lost when that happens, except for one place: /data. Each live app gets persistent storage of the size you chose, mounted at /data, and it survives deploys, restarts, go-lives and rollbacks.

What to store under /data

• User uploads such as images and documents.
• SQLite database files.
• Caches or generated files you want to keep between deploys.

Anything written elsewhere, for example ./uploads inside your app folder or /tmp, disappears on the next deploy or restart.

Examples

// Node.js with multer
const multer = require('multer');
const upload = multer({ dest: '/data/uploads' });

// SQLite with better-sqlite3
const Database = require('better-sqlite3');
const db = new Database('/data/app.db');

# Django settings.py
MEDIA_ROOT = "/data/media"

DATABASES = {
    "default": {
        "ENGINE": "django.db.backends.sqlite3",
        "NAME": "/data/db.sqlite3",
    }
}

A handy pattern is to read the path from an environment variable, such as DATA_DIR=/data, so the same code works on your laptop with a local folder. See Environment variables.

Size and price

Live storage can be any whole number from 1 to 500 GB, at ₹6 per GB per month. For example, 10 GB costs ₹60 per month and 50 GB costs ₹300 per month, before GST. Staging gets its own 1 GB for free, separate from live, so testing never touches live data.

When storage fills up

Storage usage is shown on the app. When it is almost full you get an "App storage almost full" alert, so you have time to act before writes start failing.

1. 1

   Open Settings, then Resources

   Open the app and go to Settings, then Resources.

2. 2

   Increase storage

   Pick a larger size. The new monthly price is shown.

3. 3

   Save

   Live restarts quickly with the current version and the extra space. Your existing files stay in place.

You can also free space by deleting old files your app no longer needs. See Storage full for more.

Backups and databases

Back up important data yourself, for example with a scheduled job in your app that copies /data files to object storage. For critical data, use a managed database and connect to it with a DATABASE_URL environment variable instead of keeping everything in a local file.