A financial services firm stores monthly full backups on magnetic tapes kept off-site for seven years. During a recent audit, administrators learned that some tapes written more than five years ago might have degraded. The IT team must prove that the data on these older media can still be restored if needed. Which action should the team take to meet this goal?
Perform periodic test restores from randomly selected older tapes and verify file integrity
Increase the retention of new backups and phase out the older media
Copy the oldest tapes to new read-only storage to prevent overwriting
Review the original backup job logs to confirm completion status
Regularly performing test restorations-sometimes called backup recovery tests-is the only reliable way to prove that archived data can be read and recovered. By selecting older media at random and restoring a sample of files or entire images, administrators check for bit-rot, tape degradation, catalog corruption, and hardware incompatibilities. Simply reviewing backup logs, focusing on new backups, or copying archives to read-only media does not demonstrate that the data is still intact or that the recovery process works.
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What is bit-rot, and how does it impact tape backups?
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What tools or techniques are commonly used for verifying file integrity during test restores?