How to Check That Your Backups Actually Work

Step 1: Find out where your backup goes

Your backup might go to:

If you don't know where your backup goes, or whether you have one, that's the first thing to fix. Call us and we'll find out.

Open your backup program or cloud account and look for the date and time of the last backup.
Check that it's recent. If you back up daily, the last backup should be from today or yesterday. If it's weeks or months old, it has stopped working.
Look for warnings or errors, such as “backup failed”, “drive not found” or “storage full”.
External drive? Make sure it's plugged in and turned on when the backup is supposed to run. A drive left in a drawer can't back anything up.

Make a short list of what you couldn't lose: photos, documents, accounting files, email, client records.
Find each one in the backup. Browse the backup and check that those folders are there and that the newest files inside them are recent.

This is the real test. A backup you can't restore isn't a backup.

Pick one file that isn't important, such as an old document or a single photo.
Restore it from the backup to a different place, such as a new folder on your desktop, so you don't replace the original.
Open the restored file and check that it opens and looks right.
Delete the test copy when you're done.

A single backup can fail too. Where you can, keep:

more than one copy of important files,
on more than one kind of storage (for example an external drive and a cloud service),
with at least one copy away from your home or office, so a fire, flood or theft can't take everything at once.

Put a reminder in your calendar to repeat Steps 2 and 4 every month or two, and after any new computer, new drive or new software.

We set up backups for homes and businesses, and help with photo recovery. Call (936) 280-0919, Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 6 PM.