Verify Time Machine Backup

[pedzsan]

Around Thanksgiving last year, I had to restore my laptop from a Time Machine backup. What was a little stressful was the most recent backup didn't work. I had to go back a week or more to a version that fully restored completely.

Is there a way, other than restoring the backup onto a laptop somewhere to verify that the restore from a particular date is going to work? And, is there a way to perhaps repair a backup taken on a given date?

I guess, my other question is how often does this happen to others? This was (to the best of my memory) the first time I've tried to restore from a TM backup and, it did work, eventually, but it took me about five or so tries.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

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[tarsins]

I think there was another adage that went "The only true way to verify a backup is to restore it."
Time Machine is great when it works, which is most of the time, and is my goto for quickly restoring files but having a second full backup is priceless and I too recommend Carbon Copy Cloner. I'd also suggest an offsite backup solution for those really important files and for that I use ARQ with B2.

 

[pedzsan]

Remember the old system administrator's adage: if it's worth backing up, it's worth backing up twice.
... snip ...
My second backup is with Carbon Copy Cloner to an external disk. This is a far more reliable method of making a reliable bootable snapshot.

I think there was another adage that went "The only true way to verify a backup is to restore it."
... snip ... having a second full backup is priceless and I too recommend Carbon Copy Cloner. I'd also suggest an offsite backup solution for those really important files and for that I use ARQ with B2.

I know roughly about CCC but never used it. Your wisdom is obvious.

Is it possible to make a copy via CCC and make it bootable? If anyone has good links to CCC tutorials and examples, that would be great.

 

[CoastalOR]

I know roughly about CCC but never used it. Your wisdom is obvious.

Is it possible to make a copy via CCC and make it bootable? If anyone has good links to CCC tutorials and examples, that would be great.

Here are links to CCC's website:
https://bombich.com
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5

You can download a fully functional for 30 days CCC app before having to purchase it to continue use.