However the question I find myself asking now is “Have you tested your backup?”

Yes, while most people do backup the family computer in some way, shape, or form, most never test the backup / restore before they really need it.

So today I set about testing my own backup and restore procedure. The first thing I did was to take a new Full System backup using the existing backup plan (I do a weekly full backup of my Home directory to an external USB drive). I then wiped my machine (Not an easy thing to do).

Now I was where I hoped I would never be, unplanned, again. I then went about restoring my system.

1) I reinstalled Mac OS X
2) I connected the external USB hard drive which as well as holding the backups in a directory called backups has a directory called emergency in which I keep two text files. The first contains a copy of my WEP key, the second a list of the applications I have installed.
3) I now connect to my Wireless network and run a software update.
4) Once the software update has completed and I have rebooted and rerun the software update to ensure that everything is the latest version I kick off a restore.
5) Once the restore has completed I re-install the applications I have listed in my second text file. This is a good test to make sure I have the source for all the applications I have paid for, which I normally keep in a folder in my home directory. It also ensures that I have all of the serial keys.
6) The last step is to make sure everything works, making sure applications run as expected (all the preferences should be as before as they are store in plist files that are stored in my /home/library/ blah directory).

For me it all when fine with a couple of groans like Parallels requires me to re-enter two serial numbers (the original and the version 3 upgrade one) and for some reason some of my email is showing up as not having been downloaded from the server (all very old archives so not major). One major issue is that the restore of my Photo’s and iPhoto didn’t happen. It would appear that the pictures were not being backed up. Now normally at this point I would be throwing the laptop around the room and opening a large bottle of whisky but I know I copied off my entire collection to my parents machine two weekends ago, so I will pop round there tomorrow and copy them back. However it is something I need to investigate, but that was the purpose of the test. Imagine if this had happended a year down the line?