Is Verify completely necessary

[clytwyn]

Hello,

I know verifying after a backup is highly recommended but my full backup takes up the whole weekend and most of monday.  So I've been contemplating turning off the verify.  Only reason I'm considering doing this is because we have a schedule where we do test restores monthly.  So doing the verify and test restore seems kind of redundant.

I'm not sure how long the verify takes but on average I'm backing up about 1.3 TB on a Overland Powerloader with 200/400.  I would think the verify would take just as long as a backup.

Any suggestions? 

Message Edited by clytwyn on 03-31-2008 12:43 PM

[Ken_Putnam]

You should be able to tell how long the verify takes from looking at the job logs.

All verify does is read the tape, compute checksums, and then compare them to checksums written to the tape, it does not actually compare tape to disk

Many modern tape drive use read-after-write to do the same thing on the write pass, and will post errors if the data appears corrupt.

As long as your boss is satisfied with monthly test restores, they should suffice