PostgreSQL database data loss - all tables disappeared
yeongyeolsa-byte
HOBBYOP

a month ago

Hi Railway Support Team,

I'm experiencing a critical issue with my PostgreSQL

database on Railway.

Project: ygs (production environment)

Postgres Service URL:

postgres-production-5f5e.up.railway.app

Database: railway

Region: Southeast Asia

Issue:

All tables in my PostgreSQL database have completely

disappeared. The database is running and accessible, but

every table (including user, user_profile,

user_subscription, match_history, alembic_version, etc.) is

gone. When I query information_schema.tables, zero user

tables are returned.

Timeline:

  • The application was working normally until approximately 1

week ago (around May 20, 2026)

  • I did NOT run any DROP TABLE or database reset commands
  • The Postgres service shows as "Online" and "Deployment

successful"

  • The last manual backup available is from 2026-01-27

What I've verified:

  • Connected to the database via the public URL — confirmed

zero tables exist

  • Checked both railway and postgres databases — both empty
  • No code changes were deployed that would affect the

database schema

  • The backend application logs show: relation "user" does

not exist

Request:

  1. Can you investigate what caused the data loss? Was there

a volume reset, migration, or infrastructure change on your

end?

  1. Do you have any internal backups or WAL logs from the

past week (May 20-27, 2026) that could be used to restore

the data?

This is a production database with real user data, and

restoring it is critical for our business operations.

Thank you for your urgent assistance.

Solved

1 Replies

Railway
BOT

a month ago

Your Postgres service does not have a volume attached, which means all database data was stored on the container's ephemeral filesystem. When the service redeploys (including periodic infrastructure migrations that happen automatically), ephemeral storage is discarded, and that data cannot be recovered. Going forward, attach a volume to your Postgres service so data persists across redeploys, and enable scheduled backups to protect against future data loss.


Status changed to Awaiting User Response Railway about 1 month ago


Railway
BOT

24 days ago

This thread has been marked as solved automatically due to a lack of recent activity. Please re-open this thread or create a new one if you require further assistance. Thank you!

Status changed to Solved Railway 24 days ago


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