I've spent the last 3 days moving ~100 devices over from Wink, and have setup Rule Machine, Motion Lighting etc. so it works the way I want it to.
I've also made a backup (and saved it off line).
If my Hubitat dies, can I simply buy a new Hubitat C5 and restore the backup onto it?
Or do I need to repair everything (z-wave/zigbee) to the new hubitat, and make my Rules etc. again.
As it stands today (and as I understand it) - the latter.
Re-add every device, fix rules as the devices will all change when you re-add them.
One of the reasons I'm in no hurry to get rid of my C4s.
Yeah... I don't understand why they would drop the usb stick configuration. That was such a good idea and I would have bought one if I could find it somewhere.
You can actually use the USB stick with a C-5 hub. The Hubitat team has mentioned that this technique could be used today to replace a failed C-4 hub with a C-5. This way the devices would still be paired correctly.
I am hopeful that one day the Hubitat Team will figure out a way to backup and restore everything, including the Zigbee and Z-Wave device associations. I can dream, right? 
This is on our roadmap, and is quite doable. Stay tuned.... No date yet.
We still sell the older C-4 hub with external stick. Special order.
That would be a great enhancement / reassurance for disaster recovery. 
Hmm. I just bought a C-5. I don't have any zigbee/z-wave on it yet.
So the question becomes.. do I buy a C-4 just for the stick and hope it continues to be supported by the C-6 and up or do I stick with the C-5 and be hopeful that a full backup/restore option becomes available before I might need it?
Between Wink 1, The Winkening, Wink 2, and Smartthings.. this will have been the 5th time I've rebuilt my entire smarthome and I'm hoping it will be my last.
Actually, I think you'll get lucky with Zigbee devices here. They have a factory-set MAC that is stored in the Hubitat database too and matched up when the Zigbee device is reset and re-paired to the same hub/coordinator, so I assume it would also be able to do that if the coordinator ID changed (as long as you have the database restored with those MACs in it). The "short" DNI will change, but that shouldn't affect anything (already happens and doesn't for me--I occasionally move devices between different hubs). Most LAN devices should be OK too, though it depends on what's happening on the other end.
Of course, if you also use Z-Wave, you'll have those devices in there too and will not be so lucky since it only uses the node ID (assigned by the hub/coordinator). It won't automatically replace, and there's no manual replacement option, either.
But glad to here staff is optimistic about backup possibilities. 
Agreed. The problem is really on the zwave side.
That is very reassuring. Thanks!!
I had an older model die - one of the very rare few. The whole restoration process took less than 5 minutes with a new hub using the old stick, and restoring a backup file. Definitely an indispensable feature worth bringing to future models!
Vera used to do it by asking the ZWave controller to ‘dump’ it’s internal state. For the gen of Zwave they were using, it would create a 16K backup of th internal flash.
Internally, the Zwave API used wasn’t designed to do that, but when asked for 16K, it would wrap around and copy the bit of flash that contained the keys and pairing table
... that could be restored to any ZWave processor of similar age/generation....
This is what I do with the USB stick in the C-4, I cloned sticks multiple times, for the z wave only, for the zigbee the hub has the db and re pairing all devices will get the same slot they had. Swapping hubs is easy, just swapping radios is not so easy but you definitely can do it with C-4 without losing any configuration.
I'm glad to know HE team is working to create a backup option for the z wave and zigbee.
Download the Hubitat app
