Before treating a manual backup as your only recovery copy, perform basic verification.
- Confirm the download completed.
- Check that the file is not zero bytes or unexpectedly tiny.
- Confirm the filename and date.
- Use an archive utility or
tar -tvfto list contents when practical. - Keep the archive in a storage location that will not automatically delete it.
Archive verification cannot guarantee every application inside it is consistent, but it can catch obvious download and file-corruption problems before you need the backup.
