Any serious backup however absolutely requires you to check the reliability of your hardware. The reason for this is that with unreliable hardware it is possible that individual bits or entire bit rows are not correctly written down on the backup medium or that individually backed up bits change of their own accord over time. It can therefore happen that after a time, a file you have backed up to a particular backup medium can no longer be read.
To ascertain whether all the files have been correctly filed on the backup medium, 7-Backup offers the facility for checking the backup for integrity.
The wizard can be found on the main menu under Tools > Check backup..., or simply under "Check backup".
Step one of the wizard will show you the backup task last used. You can open another task by clicking on the "Open task" button. Set the check mark to check the elements!
In step two, select whether you would like a "bit-by-bit" check. This is advisable because the program then performs a full check of the data. Each individual bit, the data carrier's smallest unit of storage, is checked.
The second option is the less reliable but quicker option. All that is done here is to check that the source files are present with the same name on the backup medium.
Do you still know the decryption password?
If the backup task has been set up so that files are encrypted, then you will be asked for the decryption password when the check is made. This allows you to establish whether you still know the password for decrypting the files! But the password will only be checked if the full bit-by-bit check was selected.
After a full check has been made, the wizard displays the result. If any problems have occurred, you can view them by clicking on the "Display problems" button. Faulty files are displayed and you can click on the"Repeat backup" button to repeat a file backup. If then the error message disappears from the screen, it means that this time it has worked (check again to confirm this).
If the wizard has detected a very large number of errors and you cannot find any reason for this, you should consider buying new backup hardware. Many problems that cannot be replicated can be resolved in this way. Either the medium is obsolete, is defective or is not of the normal quality.
Note: You can view and order backup media on the Internet at www.langmeier-backup.com/backupmedia that are the perfect complement to the backup software.