Many users have complained that they fail to restore data from data backups. Most of time, it is because that they haven’t verify the data backups before. This post will teach you 7 essential tips to test your data backups effectively.
As you know, it is extremely important to make regular backups of your data. It is because data backups will play a great role in data recovery. For example, when your Outlook PST gets damaged, if you’ve backed up the PST file recently, it will be quite simple to retrieve the damaged Outlook data.
However, when attempting to recover data from the backups, you may fail as well. More often than not, this case occurs due to your neglect of testing data backups. There is a common misconception that making data backups is just copying data. You should bear in mind a fact that it is also a critical step to test your backups to confirm that it is intact. Here are 7 effective techniques to do it.
1. Verify backups periodically
First of all, equal to the fact that you have to back up your data on a regular basis, you should also verify data backups on a periodical basis. Many uncertain factors can lead to backup corruption, such as the unexpected storage media damage, etc. So as to prevent these inconclusive elements from damaging your data backups, you have to check the backups frequently.
2. Examine backups systematically
When it comes to testing data backups, you may think that it is only involved with restoring data. In reality, you have to examine the entire data backups, including the process of backing up data and recovering data from backups. That is to say, you should verify backups systematically.
3. Test backups in different cases
Furthermore, you should test your data backups in different cases. For instance, when testing, you will need attempt to restore data. In this case, you had better try to restore the backed up data to different machines, such as two PCs that are using the different systems or are configured differently.
4. Check all backed up data
You may feel that it is cumbersome and will take a long time to test all backed up data. Thus, you may select to try to restore some random files. Though it’s indeed much more convenient, it cannot give you a complete affirmation that your data backup in intact since the files which you haven’t test may be corrupt.
5. Ensure enough space available for data recovery
Moreover, when selecting a device for data recovery, you should confirm that the device has sufficient storage space for storing the recovered data. Provided that the selected medium doesn’t have the enough space, not only will data recovery definitely fail, but also the failure will damage your data backups.
6. Don’t try to restore to original media
In addition, you had better not restore the data to the original media. It means, if you backed up your PC data to an external hard drive, when trying to restore data, you shouldn’t recover them to the original PC. Otherwise, the recovered data will be mixed with the original data. At that point, it’ll be difficult to distinguish them.
7. Compare the restored data to originals carefully
What’s more, after restoring data successfully, you need to proceed to check if the recovered are the same as the originals. For instance, you should compare them depending on their names, sizes and other vital information.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including mdf repair and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com