Your backup isn't a backup until you've tested the restore

Description and use

Backups without restore testing are unreliable. A monthly restore drill with restic verifies repository integrity, credential validity, and file recoverability, providing audit proof.

Problem

Backups can appear successful but may fail when actually needed because the restore process is never tested.

Outcome

Monthly restore tests turned a promise of backup into proven recoverability, reducing risk of data loss and providing audit evidence.

Workflow

• 1. Run restic check to verify repository consistency.
• 2. Execute restic -r /mnt/backups/repo restore latest --target /tmp/restore-test to pull the latest snapshot into a temporary directory.
• 3. Diff the restored directory against the live source (e.g., diff -r /tmp/restore-test /live/source).
• 4. Verify file counts and sizes match.
• 5. Delete the temporary directory and log the outcome.

Evidence

Once a month, I restore something real from a snapshot. Not to a test directory I'll delete — to a path I actually compare against the source.

Source

Run restic check first to confirm the repo is internally consistent, because a repo that's silently corrupt will still list snapshots happily.

Source

The whole thing takes five minutes. The point isn't drama — it's that the skill and the credentials both still work.

Source