Back this up

Reaper's data folder holds what you cannot regenerate. Where it is depends on the install.

File	Why it matters
reaper.db	Your policies, decisions, whitelist and audit trail.
secret.key	The master key, when Reaper generated one. Absent if you supply REAPER_SECRET_KEY.
secret.salt	Minted per install, and paired with that key. Both are needed to decrypt.

Caution

The key and the salt only work as a pair. The key is stretched with secret.salt before anything is decrypted, so a backup carrying one without the other reads exactly like a backup carrying neither. Take them together, every time.

Let Reaper do it

Settings, Backup produces one archive, which removes the chance of taking two files out of three by hand. It leaves out secret.key when the key comes from REAPER_SECRET_KEY, because there is no file to take: restoring that archive needs the same variable set.

Restoring that archive asks for your admin password. Downloading it asks only that you are signed in.

Caution

Treat the archive and reaper.db as sensitive. They hold the credentials for every service Reaper talks to, including a Plex token that grants full control of your Plex account. Encryption at rest guards the file on disk. Keep it out of public issue reports and support threads all the same.

The one you can throw away

cache.db sits next to them and is disposable by design. It is other people's data mirrored locally, meaning watch history and the IMDb dataset, and Reaper rebuilds it.

Nothing in cache.db is a source of truth, which is why it stays out of the backup.

Restoring

Put the files back in the data folder and start Reaper. Migrations run before the app accepts a connection, so a database from an older version is brought forward on the way up.

Restore reaper.db without its matching key and salt and every stored credential is unreadable and must be entered again. The policies, decisions and audit trail survive.

Caution

Re-entering a credential against the wrong key destroys the good one. If services come back unreadable, put the right key and salt in place first. Saving over an unreadable credential writes new ciphertext under the wrong key, and the original is then gone.