Backup Data Integrity Check

Software & Operating Systems
1

Had a thought mowing the yard today. How do you verify the integrity of your backups?
I understand checking the backup VM by restoring snapshot and seeing that all is well and working.
How do you check integrity of say a dataset of 1000’s of pictures/text files/etc?
I am using Truenas and having snapshots made daily.
Wanted to get an idea of how you all verify on a regular basis that something has not happened to a dataset full of pictures/text files/etc.
I understand ZFS should not let this happen(if hardware is setup correctly) with how its built but its also not 100% error proof and definitely not human error proof.
I have a very rough idea but wanted to get a feel for what the community does to make sure I am not reinventing the wheel.

2

Restic has a checksum functionality.

It does just that.

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3

Now, zfs is error proof to the point that you don’t have massive hardware failure. It’s about as bulletproof as you can get.

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4

Ok so only rely on the checksum?
I mean makes sense just still a noob in this dept.
Obviously nobody wants to look through every pictures or file individually.

5

Checksum matching can be reliably used to verify data integrity. The chances of a data corruption causing a hash collision are beyond astronomical.

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6

If you install file integrity tools like Tripwire or Samhain on your system they will regularly verify files have not changed and notify you when they do. Any backups you make will include that database of checksums, and so you can restore it to any machine and verify everything matches.