Venyu Blog

I remember driving to meet someone for an interview to do some sub-contracting work. It should’ve just taken 20 minutes but I ended up 1.5 hours late.

I didn’t check the traffic report that day to learn that there was a bad accident and construction work nearby. I didn’t have an alternate route planned out. I was the guy that sat in his car cursing like the dad from A Christmas Story and shaking my fist at the miserable traffic in Baton Rouge.

There’s nothing like coming across as an incompetent jerk to your future boss on your first day. Luckily I still got the job because no one else wanted to do the project. A small detail.

While most people can relate to me showing up late for an interview, most people don’t see how this can happen with their backups. If you don’t test your backup, you could be in for a seriously miserable experience. I once used the default Windows Vista backup tool… I’m sure I don’t have to say much more, but just so you know: after days of working with the backup, I never recovered what I needed. I assumed that it would make an entire disk image, not just backup the files that it saw fit to backup.

Once again, much fist waving and cursing ensued. This could have easily been prevented by simply testing my backups over a weekend and doing a full restore of the whole system.

A backup isn’t just something to check off to make yourself feel better until disaster strikes. It’s your data’s insurance plan. A recent Infoweek Research Survey found that of the respondents, 37% don’t have a DR/BC plan (which is an issue for another blog) and 38% have a plan and don’t test it. In our experience at Venyu, we’ve seen much higher percentages which is obviously not good.

You should be testing your backups at least twice a year to ensure that you know they’re really doing what you think they are. How about validating the data to ensure it’s not corrupted?

Testing your backups is just as important as having backups.