Hi Render Community,
I need urgent help and would like to share my experience to see if anyone has faced a similar issue, and also for Render staff to take note for future users.
Problem Timeline
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Today, while using my self-hosted n8n dashboard on Render, I suddenly got a message saying there was a server connection issue. After refreshing the page, I received a 502 error.
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I tried restoring a disk from the latest backup (today’s snapshot) using the “Restore a disk” feature.
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After restoring, I restarted the service. But when I went to my n8n Dashboard, the screen prompted me to set up my name, surname, and email — just like the initial setup when n8n is first installed.
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Upon logging in, all previous workflows and credentials were missing — the dashboard was completely empty, as if it was a brand new instance.
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I checked the logs and found multiple restarts and the error message:
Instance failed: x7wfs
Exited with status 134 while running your code. Check your service logs for more information. -
I also received an automated email from Render stating:
“Your Web Service n8n failed for the following reason: Exited with status 134”
- Before the incident, I was uploading image files to Google Drive via an n8n workflow. The UI froze and kept spinning, then the above errors occurred.
- In the disk configuration, I noticed the mount path was set to
/home/node/n8n(without the dot), following video instructions.
Later, I learned from the docs and community that the correct path should be/home/node/.n8n.
I suspect this might be related, but I need advice and confirmation.
What I’ve Done So Far
- Tried restoring the disk again, but still lost all data.
- Contacted Render Support directly (ticket submitted, waiting for reply).
- Checked the Render Status Page — no reported downtime during the incident.
- Noted the following maintenance announcement (but my incident was before the maintenance window):
Upcoming maintenance
We will be upgrading critical infrastructure on June 15th, 10:00 pm GMT+7 (June 15th, 3:00 pm UTC).
What I Need
- Immediate advice:
- Is it possible to restore my old workflows and credentials from the backup/snapshot?
- Where could my data be? Is it possible the restore mounted to the wrong folder?
- Prevention for others:
- Can Render add a warning or validation step if users try to mount disks at the wrong path for n8n?
- Better documentation or examples for n8n disk configuration in Render UI.
- Any community member who has faced this issue — how did you solve it? Any chance to recover data?
Thank you in advance for any advice or shared experience. I hope this helps prevent data loss for other n8n/Render users.
Jo