I have accidentally messed up my WSL installations a couple of times by just playing around with things and tinkering with the system files. I like being able to do this, even if I do not really know how, and sometimes make mistakes–it is a beneficial learning experience for me each time. So rather than leaving things as they are and not playing around with things that I should not, I choose to make frequent backups.
🚒 Making Backups
I back up my WSL installations using a tarball created by the WSL executable supplied by Microsoft, using a command much like the one listed below.
WSL --export Ubuntu C:\Documents\WSL\Ubuntu-WSL.tarNote that I use a dedicated folder on an alternate hard drive, as I have a few WSL instances that I want to backup and some of them are quite large. I also append the date to the compressed file.
⛑ Restoring From Backup
You can restore a WSL backup with a command like the following:
WSL --import Ubuntu C:\Documents\WSL\Ubuntu-WSL.tar