When Did You Last Check Your Backup? A 10-Minute Test That Could Save Everything

Quick question: if your computer was stolen tonight, how much of your data would still exist tomorrow? Not "I think I have a backup somewhere" — actually exist, restorable, up to date. At Real IT Consulting we meet people every month, from Hope Island to Sanctuary Cove and right across the Gold Coast, who discover at the worst possible moment that their backup stopped working in 2024. This is your friendly reminder to check.

The uncomfortable truth about backups

Backups fail silently. The external drive fills up and stops. The subscription lapses. The backup software errors quietly in the background for months. Someone unplugs the drive to move furniture and never reconnects it. Nobody notices — because backups are only ever looked at on the day disaster strikes. A backup that isn't checked is not a backup; it's a hope.

The 10-minute backup self-test

1. Find your last backup date. Open your backup software or cloud service and check when it last actually ran. If the answer surprises you, that's the point of the test.
2. Restore one file. Pick any document, restore yesterday's version to your desktop, and open it. A backup you've never restored from is unproven.
3. Check what's included. Are your photos in it? Desktop folder? Email? Accounting file? Backups configured years ago often miss the folders you use today.
4. Check the coverage of every device. The main computer might be covered — what about the laptop, and the phone with five years of photos?
5. Confirm one copy is offsite. A drive next to the computer shares its fate in a theft, fire or flood, and ransomware encrypts connected drives. Cloud backup solves this.

What good looks like

The 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, on two different types of storage, one offsite. Automatic, versioned (so you can go back to before a mistake or infection), and monitored so a failure sends an alert instead of staying silent for months.

For businesses: make it someone's job

In a business, "everyone assumed someone was checking" is the most expensive sentence in IT. Our managed backup service makes it our job — monitored daily, restore-tested regularly, covering computers and Microsoft 365 both. You get an answer to "are we backed up?" that isn't a guess.

Failed the self-test?

No shame — most people do. What matters is fixing it this week, not after the drive dies. Real IT Consulting sets up reliable, automatic backup solutions for homes and businesses across Hope Island, Sanctuary Cove, Runaway Bay, Paradise Point, Southport and the whole Gold Coast, plus Brisbane.

Take the 10-minute test today. If anything failed, contact Real IT Consulting and we'll make your backups bulletproof.