Test your Backup and Restore Process

It would be disappointing if not devastating to make regular backups, only to find some day that you're unable to restore the file(s) you need. Two things often go horribly wrong: the file you thought you were backing up was never included in your backups, or your restore process utterly fails to work.

Follow the steps below to test your backups and make sure you can restore what you've lost:

• Start with a small test: You really only need to backup and restore a few files to see if the system itself works. Don't restore some important file to test your process. Something might go wrong and you'd lose your file completely.
• Create a test folder containing a couple of test files. Create the files, or just copy a few existing ones to your test folder. Back up the folder and files, using the method you've picked. Use the actual backup media that you intend to use for your real backups (floppy, Zip, CD-R, etc.) too.
• Check the content of your backup archive. Not all archives have a way for you to examine what's in them, but most do. You may need to go through the first steps of the restore process to see the contents of the archive. You can usually abandon the process before the file(s) are actually restored.
• Delete the test files and test folder. Then, see if you can actually restore them from your backup.
• Make your *real* backup(s). Check the actual contents of the archive(s). If they don't have everything in them you expected, figure out why, and do the backup again.

  In particular, make sure that any new files that you've added get picked up by the next backup. For example some CD burning software does not add new files to compilations that you've saved, even though you see the folder listed.

• Check your backup contents thoroughly every time you make new backups until you're confident your process works consistently.

You'll need a different approach to test drive images. Most the imaging programs have a way to restore one file at a time. Try that instead of restoring the whole image. If you have another partition with enough room, you could restore the image to that alternate partition and see how it goes.

Last modified 05/21/07