Is your backup actually working?

The backup job said success. It has said success for months. Then someone needs a folder from March, and the restore is empty or the wrong disk. A backup you have not restored is a rumour.

Test it. Pick an ordinary file the business would miss: a spreadsheet, a quotation, a scan of a signed contract. Restore it to a different folder, or another machine, so the live copy stays put. Open it and check the date. If that turns into an afternoon of digging, the backup is not working, whatever the screen says. Do this on a schedule, not after something has already gone wrong. A job can report success and still be copying an empty path, or a server that was rebuilt and never connected again.

The shape that survives a bad week is the 3-2-1 rule. Three copies of the data. Two different kinds of storage. One copy kept somewhere that is not the office. The copy on the same shelf as the server shares the fire, the flood, and the person who unplugs the wrong box. The copy that lives only in the same cloud account shares the login. You need one copy you can reach when the original is gone, and another that a single mistake does not take with it. A cloud copy, a local disk, and a copy that can sit offline are the usual pieces. Which ones fit depends on how much of a day you can bear to redo. How we usually put those copies together is on the backup page.

Sync is not that copy. OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and a mapped folder that mirrors another folder are useful, and obedient. Delete a file and the deletion spreads. Encrypt the folder and the encrypted versions spread too. A sync folder is the file people are editing. A backup is an older copy, kept apart, that does not follow every change the moment it happens. If the only backup is the folder staff work in, you have a convenient duplicate and no history.

If nobody has restored a test file this year, that is the thing to book. We can try one and tell you what came back. WhatsApp us, or send a note through the contact page, and name the system you hope is being copied.