How do I test my backups?

1

I know that is a very basic question, but how do I test my backups on MacOS? Do I just create a new user, go into recovery mode, follow the prompts, and then delete the user and go about my business? Will this change anything about my main user account?

2

Welcome to the forum @James1 .
Can you tell us more about these backups you want to test? Are they backups of your entire system? Some files you don’t want to loose? Both?

3

Seeing whether a file restores successfully is probably the best bet.

For MacOS Time Machine.
There’s a verify backup option for network drive backups.
If the File History Backup is on an external drive the answer seems to be running “tmutil compare -s” in the Terminal. But after trying it I’m not really sure how to make sense of the output.

4

Thanks for the warm welcome! It’s both.