Backups: Trust but Verify

ByMike Moffit

It’s easy to assume your backup app—whether it’s Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, Backblaze, Retrospect, or something else—is quietly doing its job. But it’s possible for a bug to corrupt backups or for a destination disk to fail silently, such that you can’t restore backed-up data. We’ve seen this happen! For peace of mind, set a quarterly reminder to verify your backups. Test by restoring a few files and opening them: for Time Machine, enter Time Machine and restore a few important files; for a clone, mount it and open files; for a cloud backup, perform a small restore. Backup failures aren’t common, but since backups are your lifeline after a catastrophe, it’s worth confirming they work.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Andreus)

Social Media: Don’t just trust your backups—verify them. Each quarter, restore a few files from Time Machine, your clone, or your cloud backup, and make sure they open correctly. Silent failures happen; test restores prevent nasty surprises.

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