Card Backup

Back up your card, with history

Your Deluge SD card holds songs, kits, synths, and samples. It’s got hours of creative work on a tiny chip; disaster could strike at any time. deluge-backup gives you a safety net: a full copy of your card with version history, so you can always get back to where you were.

This is the most technical tool on deluge.quest. It runs in a terminal, not a browser. If you’ve figured out how to use the Deluge effectively, you can handle running a few commands from the terminal. You might even find it fun!

The biggest win here is the speed of backup. Before I started using this system, I just backed up my whole card en masse to a new folder on my computer, sorted by backup date. This took a ton of time and a ton of storage space. By using this Git-backed approach, you can back up your card in seconds, and only the changes are stored. You can also see exactly what changed between backups, and roll back to any previous version.

What you’ll need

• A computer running macOS, Linux, or Windows.
• A terminal (macOS Terminal, Linux Terminal, PowerShell, or Windows Terminal) to type the below commands into.
• An internet connection for the install and optional GitHub sync (not required for local backups).
• An SD card reader (or your Deluge connected via USB).
• About 15 minutes for the first-time setup.

You do not need to know Git, Python, or the command line beyond what’s on this page.

Step 1: Install

Open a terminal and run one of these. Either one works, pick whichever you have:

pipx install deluge-quest

uv tool install deluge-quest

Don’t have pipx or uv? Install pipx with pip install --user pipx (comes with Python), or install uv from astral.sh/uv.

Confirm it worked:

deluge-backup --version

You should see deluge-backup 0.2.0 (or newer). If you do, you’re ready.

Windows note: If deluge-backup isn’t recognized after install, run uv tool update-shell (or pipx ensurepath), then restart your terminal. This adds the tool’s install directory to your PATH.

Step 2: First backup

Plug in your SD card. Then:

deluge-backup init

This copies your entire SD card into ~/deluge-card and creates a version history. It might take a few minutes depending on how many samples you have.

That’s it! Your first backup is done.

Step 3: After every session

Whenever you’ve been working on the Deluge and want to save your progress:

deluge-backup save "what I worked on"

For example:

deluge-backup save "new bass patch, reworked drums on SONG042"

The message is optional. Skip it and you’ll get a timestamped “Session snapshot” instead. But a quick note about what you did makes it much easier to find things later.

That’s it! A little work will be required to roll back to a previous version, but it’s well worth digging deeper if you ever need it.

Advanced Usage

For those who want to go a little deeper with these tools…

Pushing to GitHub (optional)

Everything above works completely offline. But if you want an offsite backup (or just want to browse your XML changes on the web) you can sync to a GitHub repository.

This only pushes your XML files (songs, kits, synths), not your samples. That keeps the GitHub repo small (usually under 50 MB) while you still get full history and diffs online.

# One-time setup. Create an empty repo on GitHub first, then:
deluge-backup remote-init git@github.com:yourname/deluge-card.git

# After that, push whenever you want:
deluge-backup push

# Jump to the repo on GitHub in your browser:
deluge-backup open

If you don’t use GitHub, you can skip this. Your local backup is still fully functional. You may want to copy it to a second place for additional safety, like an external hard drive or cloud storage.

Seeing what changed

Curious what’s different since your last backup?

deluge-backup status    # which files changed
deluge-backup diff      # what changed inside them
deluge-backup log       # history of all your backups
deluge-backup size      # how big your backup is

Configuration

Backups are stored in ~/deluge-card by default. The SD card mount point defaults to /mnt/d on Linux/WSL and D:\ on Windows. macOS users will need to set DELUGE_CARD_MOUNT to wherever their card appears (e.g. /Volumes/DELUGE).

All commands

Other tools included with deluge-quest

When you installed deluge-quest, you also got these CLIs. Each one has a browser version on deluge.quest. Power users may prefer the CLIs.

Run any of them with --help to see usage, e.g. deluge-stats --help.

Troubleshooting

“command not found” / “is not recognized”

The install didn’t add the tool directory to your PATH.

• pipx: run pipx ensurepath and restart your terminal.
• uv: run uv tool update-shell and restart your terminal.

“SD card not found”

Make sure your card is plugged in and mounted.

• Windows: it’s usually D:\ — set DELUGE_CARD_MOUNT if it’s a different drive letter.
• WSL: usually /mnt/d or /mnt/e — check with ls /mnt/.
• macOS: usually /Volumes/DELUGE — set DELUGE_CARD_MOUNT accordingly.
• Linux: usually /media/username/DELUGE — set DELUGE_CARD_MOUNT accordingly.

“not a git repository”

Run deluge-backup init first. This only needs to happen once.

Windows notes

deluge-backup runs natively on Windows — no WSL required. You’ll need Git for Windows installed, since the backup tool uses git for version history.

Still stuck?

You can try opening an issue, maybe I can help.