If your Tails becomes broken, for example, if it no longer starts, follow these instructions to try to recover data from your Persistent Storage.

We recommend you always keep a current backup of your Persistent Storage. To learn how to create a backup of your Persistent Storage, see our instructions on how to back up your Persistent Storage to another Tails USB stick.

  1. Install Tails on a new USB stick onto which you want to recover your Persistent Storage. Make sure that this new USB stick is at least as large as the USB stick that has your broken Tails on it.

  2. Start on your new Tails and create a Persistent Storage.

  3. Close the Persistent Storage settings after creation, when the list of features is displayed.

    The process described below overrides the configuration of the Persistent Storage. So, it does not matter which features you turn on after creating the Persistent Storage.

  4. Restart on your new Tails, set up an administration password, and unlock the Persistent Storage.

    Make sure that all applications are closed before continuing with these instructions. Otherwise, the Persistent Storage might not be properly recovered from your broken Tails.

  5. Choose Applications ▸ Accessories ▸ Files to open the Files browser.

  6. Plug in the USB stick that has your broken Tails on it.

    If the Persistent Storage of your broken Tails is recognized, a new encrypted volume appears in the sidebar of the Files browser. Click on it and enter the passphrase of your broken Tails to unlock the volume.

    The Persistent Storage of your broken Tails shows up as TailsData.

    If no encrypted volume appears, then you might not be able to recover the Persistent Storage of your broken Tails.

    Try to check the file system of the Persistent Storage on your broken Tails.

  7. Choose Applications ▸ System Tools ▸ Root Terminal to open a terminal with administration rights.

  8. Execute the following command to recover the Persistent Storage of your broken Tails to your new Tails:

    rsync -PaSHAXv --del /media/amnesia/TailsData/ /live/persistence/TailsData_unlocked

  9. When the command finishes, it displays a summary of the data that was copied. For example:

    sent 32.32M bytes  received 1.69K bytes  21.55M bytes/sec
total size is 32.30M  speedup is 1.00

    You can now eject the TailsData volume in the Files browser and unplug the USB stick that has your broken Tails on it.

You can also explore the content of the Persistent Storage on your broken Tails from the Files browser. To do so, execute the following command from the Root Terminal:

nautilus