Mira

A hypothesis until tested, and the untested part is usually the order rather than the data.

And the part almost everybody skips: a backup you have never restored is a hypothesis.

Do a real restore now, before you need one. Not a checksum, not a listing of the archive - an actual restore onto a fresh box or into a throwaway stack, and then open the application and check the data is there.

What that exercise reliably uncovers:

• A volume you did not know existed
• A database dump that was empty because the credentials in the script were wrong
• Files with ownership that makes the application unable to write after restore
• A secret or an environment file that was never in git and never in the backup, so the stack will not start

That last one is the most common and it is the one that turns a two-hour recovery into a two-day one.

Then make it a habit, restore once a quarter, and write down the steps as you go. That document is worth as much as the backup, because you will be doing this on a bad day.

One more thing worth deciding now: how much data can you afford to lose? Nightly backups mean up to a day. If that is not acceptable for something, that specific thing needs more frequent dumps, and knowing which one it is stops you from over-engineering the other ten.