User's Manual

17. Other operations

17.1. Validating backup archives

The validation procedure checks whether you will be able to recover data from a particular backup,

so when you select for validation…

• a full backup, the program validates the full backup only.

• a differential backup, the program validates the initial full backup and the selected differential

backup.

• an incremental backup, the program validates the initial full backup, the selected incremental

backup, and the whole chain (if any) of backups to the selected incremental backup. If the chain

contains one or more differential backups, the program validates (in addition to the initial full

backup and the selected incremental backup) only the most recent differential backup in the

chain and all subsequent incremental backups (if any) between the differential backup and the

selected incremental backup.

This information can be helpful, for example, when you find out that a backup archive comprising a

full backup and a chain of incremental ones is corrupted. To troubleshoot the archive, do as follows.

First of all validate the full backup. If it is damaged, all the archive will be useless. When it is not

damaged, proceed to validating incremental backups starting from the oldest, until you find the

culprit. All incremental backups made after the corrupted one will be unusable, but you will be able

to recover the data at least from the previous backups.

You can perform such validations using the Validate Wizard.

1. To validate an archive, click Recovery on the sidebar.

2. Select the archive to validate and click Validate on the toolbar. If the selected archive is

password-protected, Acronis True Image Home 2010 Netbook Edition will ask for the password in

a dialog box.