Backups that I actually trust

2026-04-18

A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a backup. I use restic into a cheap object store and, more importantly, I rehearse the restore.

The monthly drill

On the first weekend of the month I restore a random snapshot into a scratch directory and diff a handful of files. It takes ten minutes and buys a lot of sleep.

restic -r s3:... snapshots
restic -r s3:... restore latest --target /tmp/restore-test

If the drill ever fails, that's the most useful thing the system could possibly tell me.