Does Your Backup System Work?

Let’s play a game today. Let’s play Can I Actually Get That File Back?

Someday you’re going to lose a computer file and need to restore from your backup copies. I’m sure you’ve got a good data backup system in place involving three copies of every file on two different media types, one of which is offsite. Right? That’s the 3-2-1 Rule.

The glitch comes in when, for some reason, the backup copies can’t be read. They’re corrupted or the software can’t move them back to your system or some other screw up.

Today is the day to find out whether your system works. Do it now before you actually need to do it because something is actually lost.

Open the software now and get the backup copy of a file. Do it yourself if you’re the IT person or ask your IT person to do it for you. Pick a file at random and ask for the backup copy. Open the copy and make sure it is what it’s supposed to be. Just do it. If it works, then you’ll have wasted five minutes. If it doesn’t work, you’ll be able to fix the problem before disaster strikes.

Some of you are discovering that your system doesn’t work properly. Others are discovering that no one knows how to restore the files. Some of you are realizing that you don’t have a backup system in place. It’s all good because this is a test—this is only a test. When real disaster strikes, you’ll have a system that works.

Related articles:

  1. How a Backup Will Save You a Day or More
  2. The Best Time and Billing System
  3. Do You Have a System for Not Having a System?
  4. Ditching Your Phone System
  5. Is It Time to Replace Your Computer System?

  • Julie K

    I got the test this for real yesterday. A file folder was missing and I looked in Timemachine backup until I saw the file where it was suppose to be. I found it about a week back when it must have been inadvertently deleted from the computer. I restored from Timemachine. Total time: 5 minutes or less.

    While I like and use SuperDuper, Timemachine works great for this. The file was found a week earlier. It would NOT have been on SuperDuper which runs every night. I do keep multiple SuperDuper backups on different drives so I may have found on one of them, but still Timemachine was my best choice.

    Timemachine is an incremental backup, while SuperDuper is a Clone. You need both! If my hard drive dies, SuperDuper will boot and I will be back working in 5 minutes.

    I could also have found the missing folder in my offsite, versioned backup.

    • http://www.rosen.com Lee Rosen

      Julie,

      I’m glad it worked. I love Time Machine as well. It’s fantastic. Do you use it via your wifi network? Or do you have a drive plugged in directly?

      Lee

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