151 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2015
8 Operations with archives and backups
8.1 Validating archives and backups
Validation is an operation that checks the possibility of data recovery from a backup.
Validation of a file backup imitates recovery of all files from the backup to a dummy destination.
Validation of a disk or volume backup calculates a checksum for every data block saved in the backup.
Both procedures are resource-intensive.
Validation of an archive will validate all the archive's backups. A vault (or a location) validation will
validate all the archives stored in this vault (location).
While successful validation means high probability of successful recovery, it does not check all factors
that influence the recovery process. If you back up the operating system, only a test recovery in a
bootable environment to a spare hard drive can guarantee success of the recovery. At least ensure
that the backup can be successfully validated using the bootable media.
Limitation
You cannot validate archives and backups in Acronis Cloud Storage (p. 215). However, an initial
seeding backup (p. 218) is automatically validated immediately after its creation.
Different ways to create a validation task
Using the Validation page is the most general way to create a validation task. Here you can validate
immediately or set up a validation schedule for any backup, archive, or vault you have permission to
access.
Validation of an archive or of the latest backup in the archive can be scheduled as part of the backup
plan. For more information, see Creating a backup plan (p. 33).
To access the Validation page, first select a validation object: a vault, an archive, or a backup.
To select a vault, click the Vaults icon in the Navigation pane and select the vault by expanding
the vaults tree in the Vaults view or directly in the Navigation pane.
To select an archive, select a vault, and then in the Vault view select the Archive view tab and
click the archive name.
To select a backup, select an archive in the Archive view, expand the archive by clicking the
expand button to the left of the archive name, and then click the backup.
After selecting the validation object, select Validate from the context menu. The Validation page will
be opened with the pre-selected object as a source. All you need to do is to select when to validate
and (optionally) provide a name for the task.
To create a validation task, perform the following steps.
What to validate
Validate
Choose an object to validate:
Archive (p. 156) - in this case, you need to specify the archive.
Backup (p. 152) - specify the archive first. Then, select the desired backup in this archive.
Vault (p. 152) - select a vault (or other location), to validate archives from.
