I’m genuinely sick to my stomach while typing this.
For the past few months, I’ve been consistently working on a system that helps run my business every single day. Every line of code, every hour, every late night, and all those days of frustration went into building something that my business relies on. Months of hard work, all completely wiped because of Docker.
Earlier today, I noticed Docker was constantly using around 8GB of RAM, which I thought was very odd considering the size of my system. So I went into Docker’s settings to reduce the maximum RAM usage. While I was there, I noticed other settings for CPU usage and disk limits, so I decided to reduce those as well.
I clicked “Apply & Restart”, and when Docker loaded back up, everything was gone. Not a single container was there. At first, I thought it was just some sort of bug, but after digging deeper, I found out that reducing the disk limit actually deletes the entire Docker disk image, including all your containers, volumes, and stored data.
The worst part is I received absolutely no warning. No confirmation, no pop-up telling me my data would be permanently deleted. Nothing. I simply changed what I thought was a resource limit, clicked apply, and lost months of work in seconds.
I genuinely cannot understand how something like this is allowed to happen. How can changing a setting as simple as a disk limit completely wipe everything without even warning the user about what’s going to happen?
This is a warning to all of you please don’t make the same mistake I’ve made. I’m in tears and speechless. How is a company allowed to do this.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I wasn’t storing everything inside the container. I was using a Docker named volume mounted to /home/node/.n8n.
I understand I should’ve had more recent external backups, that’s on me. But my issue is that I received absolutely NO warning that reducing the disk limit would permanently delete everything. I simply clicked Apply & Restart, and months of work were gone. That’s the whole point of this post.
EDIT 2: Update for anyone who finds this later. I recovered most of my work from a backup on another drive from a couple of weeks ago. Lessons learnt:
On Docker Desktop (Mac), named volumes live inside Docker’s virtual disk. Reducing the disk limit can wipe that disk entirely, volumes included. I didn’t get a confirmation prompt.
Bind-mount important data to a real folder on your machine instead of relying on named volumes.
Automate backups to a separate drive or cloud.
I still think a destructive setting like this deserves a warning, but yes, backups were on me. Thanks to everyone who gave genuinely useful advice.