64 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2011
12 Other Operations
12.1 Validating backups (Actions -> Validate)
Validating backups is an operation that checks the possibility of data recovery from a backup. Note
that 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
to a new virtual machine can guarantee success of the recovery.
In Acronis vmProtect you can validate a Location, an Archive or a Recovery Point. Validation of a
recovery point imitates recovery of all files from the backup to a dummy destination. Validation of an
archive will validate all recovery points stored in this archive. Validation of a location will check the
recovery of all archives stored in this location.
12.1.1 What to validate
First of all, you should define which item type you want to validate from 3 available options:
Location, Archive or Recovery Point.
Location Validating a location will check the integrity of all the archives inside this location. Note
that this is usually a more time-consuming process than granular validation of specific archives or
recovery points (especially if you store multiple archives in the location). The validation time also
depends on the number of the backups (recovery points) included in each archive in the selected
location. Note that password-protected archives will not be validated in this case. You should choose
the option to validate Archive instead.
