Saving ES data folder vs snapshotting

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

I'm debating the pros and cons of either storing a backup of the entire data folder of each node or snapshotting the cluster to save the data.

  1. if I save the data folder for each node, if that node burns down and I still have that data folder, does ES work perfectly fine to just implant that data folder onto a new node?

  2. What's the advantage to snapshotting vs just saving the data folder?

Thanks!

2

If you have multiple nodes and are using replicas, then copying data dir will end up copying the whole data more than once.

Also, if you don't stop indexing, you might end up with inconsistent data.

Snapshot solves all those problems.