Pis consume lower power, but are less powerful also. I think thr Power Consumption VS Performance is way better on Tiny/Mini/Micros. The Pi4 may idle at 3-4W where a 8th gen USSF will idle at 6-8W, but will provide more than 2x the performance IMO.
I prefer paying almost the same price for a USSF with an i5-8500T than a Pi, even if it consume more, idle under 10W is great, and they let you go up to 65W if needed!
I do restore my VMs to deplicate VMs to test from time to time (it’s pretty easy with Proxmox) but I use Restic for data backups which encrypts the data before uploading it, so one should restore a backup to a different folder to ensure the data integrity and that you didn’t forget your keys ahah
You don’t have to do it every week or month, but it’s worth doing it a few times a year or when you change something!