---
title: Physical backups | Tiger Data Docs
description: Make physical backups of your entire TimescaleDB instance with pg_basebackup or external backup and restore managers
---

For full instance physical backups (which are especially useful for starting up new [replicas](/docs/deploy/self-hosted/replication-and-ha/index.md)), [`pg_basebackup`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-pgbasebackup.html) works with all TimescaleDB installation types. You can also use any of several external backup and restore managers such as [`pg_backrest`](https://pgbackrest.org/), or [`barman`](https://pgbarman.org/). These tools all allow you to take online, physical backups of your entire instance, and many offer incremental backups and other automation options.