Made a backup? Great. But have you ever actually restored it?

A backup you've never restored is really just a guess. In this post we explain how to check whether your backup actually works — in half an hour.

Most business owners we speak to have a backup. Of their website, their accounts, their mailbox, their shared drive. Something runs automatically somewhere, and that feels reassuring — until the moment you actually need that backup and it turns out to be empty, out of date, or impossible to restore without the one person who happens to be on holiday.

A backup that has never been tested isn't a backup. It's an assumption. And this is a great time to hold that assumption up to the light, before the busy season hits with deadlines, invoices and hectic weeks.

Why backups so often fail silently

Backups rarely break all at once. They deteriorate quietly. A few common causes we see in practice:

• The drive or cloud storage is full, so new versions are no longer being written.
• The backup account password was changed, and nobody updated it in the backup settings.
• A file is being created, but it's 0 KB or corrupt.
• The backup lives on the same server as the original data — so in the event of a hack or fire, you lose everything at once.
• Only the database is backed up, not the files (or the other way around).
• Failure alerts are sent to an email address nobody reads anymore.

The frustrating part: you only notice any of this when you actually need the backup. And that's precisely the worst time to discover something is wrong.

The question you should be asking yourself

Not: "do we have a backup?" But: "if our website or accounting system is wiped tomorrow morning, how long will it take to get back up and running, and who handles that?"

If you can't answer that question within thirty seconds — with a name, a procedure, and a sense of how much data you could lose at most — now is a good time to find out.

A simple four-step test

You don't need to be an IT professional to do this. Set aside half an hour at a quiet moment.

1. Find the most recent backup

Log in to your hosting provider, your accounting package, or whichever system creates the backup. Check the date of the latest file. Is it today or yesterday? Good. Is it three months ago? That's a red flag.

2. Check whether the file is stored somewhere else

A backup stored in the same place as the original doesn't count. With ransomware or a compromised server, both disappear at the same time. A proper backup lives in at least one separate location: a different cloud, an external drive, or a dedicated service.

3. Actually restore something — for real

This is the step almost everyone skips. Pick one file or one page and try to restore it. Does it work? Do you actually see the file? Can you open it? If the answer to any of these questions is "no" or "no idea," you have your answer.

4. Write down who does what if things go wrong

On a single sheet of paper, note: where the backup is stored, who can restore it, what number to call if that person is unavailable, and how many hours a recovery would take. Keep that sheet not only digitally, but also printed out in a drawer. Because when your systems are down, you probably can't access your digital documents either.

What a solid backup setup should do at minimum

• Daily creation of a new version, automatically.
• At least 30 days of versions retained, so you can go back to before a problem you only discover later.
• Stored in a separate location, independent of the original system.
• Send an alert when something goes wrong — to an address that someone actually reads.
• Tested at least once a year with a real restore.

All of that sounds logical — yet in practice, the last one is the rarest.

Websites are a category of their own

If you have a WordPress site, there's often a backup plugin installed that "does something." Exactly what, you usually don't know. For websites, there are a few extra things to watch out for:

• Does the backup include both the database and the files directory?
• Does the backup still work as your site grows (large media library)?
• Can you restore to a different host, or are you locked in to your current provider?

That last point matters more than it sounds. If your hosting provider goes under or you want to switch, you need to be able to take your backup somewhere else and carry on.

In short

Having a backup is step one. Knowing it works is step two. And only once you've successfully restored something do you know you've genuinely taken that second step. Put it in your calendar once a year, and you'll sleep noticeably better.

Rather not deal with this yourself? We can help you set up and test a reliable backup and recovery routine for your website, so you know exactly where you stand if something goes wrong.