I am quite worried about losing information and not being able to recover it from the backups, so I am trying to nail the best automated way to make sure the backups are good.

Restic comes with a check command, that according to the documentation here has this two “levels”:

  • Structural consistency and integrity, e.g. snapshots, trees and pack files (default)
  • Integrity of the actual data that you backed up

In plain words, I understand this as: The data you uploaded to the repository is still that data.

Now my question is, do you think this is enough to trust the backups are right? I was thinking about restoring the backup in a temporary location and running diff on random files to check the files match the source, but I don’t know if this is redundant now.

How do you make sure you can trust your backups?

  • ChewyEnglish
    11·
    6 days ago

    Trying to actually restore is the best way to ensure the backup works. But it’s annoying so I never do it.

    I usually trust restic to do it’s job. Validating that files are there and are readable can be done with restic mount, and you’ve mentioned restic check.

    The best way to ensure your data is safe is to do a second backup with another tool. And keep your keys safe and accessible. A remote backup has no use of the keys burned down.