Cyberstudy
Supplementary — not from your PDF Beginner ~30 min

Back up, restore and verify

Back up a folder, restore it somewhere else, and prove the restore is complete with hashes. Then write a 3-2-1 plan for your own data.

Environment

Your own computer and a USB drive or second folder. Use Windows File History or robocopy, or tar or rsync on Linux/macOS.

Before you start

  • Read Data Backups (p.184) and Continuity of Operations (p.190).

You will

  • Take a backup
  • Test a restore
  • Verify integrity with hashes
  • Plan backup frequency, media and location

Steps

  1. 1

    Make a test folder with a few files, including a subfolder.

  2. 2

    Back it up: on Windows, robocopy C:\test D:\backup\test /E; on Linux, tar czf /media/usb/test.tgz ~/test.

  3. 3

    Hash every original file: on Windows, Get-ChildItem C:\test -Recurse -File | Get-FileHash; on Linux, find ~/test -type f -exec sha256sum {} +.

  4. 4

    Restore to a new location, hash the restored files the same way, and compare the two lists.

  5. 5

    Time the restore. That's your measured recovery time for this data.

  6. 6

    Write a 3-2-1 plan for your real important data: which copies, which media, which offsite or cloud copy, how often, and how you'll test it.

Check your understanding

  • ?Why is a backup you've never restored from not really a backup yet?
  • ?What does the 'offsite' copy protect against that the others don't?
  • ?Which is your backup type here: full, incremental or differential?