Skip to main content

Validation of Backup

Thread needs solution

As I've been trying to learn about ATI, I think I read somewhere that you can receive confirmation that the backup is good. I've looked through the settings again today but can't find anywhere to do this.

Any help please?

0 Users found this helpful

Mike, the option for Validation is found on the Advanced Options configuration page for the task as shown below, but I have to say that I do not use this option personally.

2017-12-17 13_32_49.png

If you select this option to perform validation when a backup is created, it can effectively double the time for the backup to run.

You can use the second option to validate your backup on a set schedule (click on Once a month) to set a different schedule.

My preference is to a) check the log for each backup to look for any issues during that process, b) run a manual validation on demand, c) use the shell integration feature of ATI to walk through the backup image content in Explorer.

To set this in context, validation is a mechanism for recalculating the checksum for the backup file(s) in a version chain and to compare this with the checksum stored within the file(s).  A secondary purpose is to ensure that version chains are complete, i.e. no incremental files are missing that would break the chain.

Validation cannot guarantee the contents of the backup are good, only that they are as they were at the moment of creating the file.  If the original data was already corrupted before the backup, then that is what will be stored in the backup!