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Services · Tech
Disaster recovery testing
Not backup. Proving the restore actually works. Almost nobody tests, and the ones who do are the ones still trading afterwards.£3,500 to £8,000
What disaster recovery testing actually means
Disaster recovery testing is the step almost everyone skips: proving that your backups actually restore. A backup that runs every night is a comforting thing to own, and it is worth nothing at all until the day you try to bring it back and find out whether it works. Testing is deliberately, unglamorously about that day, rehearsed in advance so the real one is boring.
What we do is a genuine restore, not a paperwork exercise. On a scheduled date we take your backups and rebuild your systems from them onto real hardware or a real cloud instance, and we measure two numbers that matter: how long it took to get you working again, and how much data you would have lost. Those are your recovery time and recovery point, and until you have tested, both are guesses.
Out of it you get a documented runbook, the step-by-step your own team could follow to recover without us in the room, and an honest verdict. If the backups restore cleanly, you have proof and peace of mind. If they do not, you find out on a calm Tuesday with everything still running, which is infinitely better than discovering it in the middle of an actual disaster with the business stopped.
See it work
Rather than take our word for it
Half of these backups would not actually save you. Decide which ones really would.
Sort each one
0/6 rightBackups copy to a USB drive that stays plugged into the same server, all day, every day.
Backups run every night and the software always reports success. Nobody has ever tried to restore one.
Everything saves straight into a shared cloud folder that syncs in real time.
Nightly backups go to off-site storage that cannot be altered or deleted for 30 days, and a test restore is run every month.
Three copies of the data, on two kinds of media, with one kept off-site and offline, plus a restore drill each quarter.
Your hosted email and cloud files are backed up to a separate, independent service with 90 days of history, test-restored every quarter.
A scripted demonstration. On your own kit we run a real check and, most importantly, a test restore to prove the backups actually work.
How it helps your business
The blunt benefit is survival. The statistics on businesses that suffer a major data loss without a working recovery are grim, and the single thing that separates the ones still trading afterwards is not whether they had backups, it is whether those backups actually worked. Testing is how you move from the group that assumed they were fine to the group that knew.
It also turns a vague fear into a plan. Once you know your real recovery time and recovery point, you can make sober decisions: is a full day of downtime and an hour of lost data acceptable for your business, or do you need to invest to bring those numbers down? You cannot make that call sensibly until the numbers are measured, and most people have never measured them.
And the runbook removes the dependence on any one person or supplier at the worst possible moment. A recovery that only works if a specific individual is reachable at 3am is not a recovery plan, it is a hope. A tested, written procedure means the business can come back even if the usual person is on a plane, which is exactly the kind of luck disasters have.
What is included
- A real restore, to real hardware or a real cloud instance, on a scheduled date
- Measured recovery time and recovery point, written down
- A documented runbook your team can follow without us
- The awkward finding delivered honestly if the backups do not actually restore
Real examples
Illustrative cases. Tap one to see what happened and what could have been done.
The backup that never actually worked
The case
A manufacturer had backups running faithfully every night for two years and had never restored one. A configuration change eighteen months earlier had quietly broken the job, so the recent backups were incomplete and would not have restored the database the business ran on, leaving them one hardware failure from disaster with no idea.
What could have been done
A scheduled restore test finds the broken job on a calm day, and retesting until it genuinely works turns a false sense of safety into a real one, long before an actual failure forces the issue.
The number that changed the decision
The case
A wholesaler assumed they could recover from a serious failure in a couple of hours. In reality, given how the data was structured and where the backups lived, the honest figure was closer to two full days of being unable to trade.
What could have been done
A real test measures the true recovery time, and faced with the real number they can decide two days is unacceptable and invest in a faster setup, a call they could only make once someone had actually measured it.
Ready to sort disaster recovery testing?
Tell us what is going wrong and we will come back with a fixed price in writing, after a short scoping call. No obligation, and no jargon.
Common questions about disaster recovery testing
How much does disaster recovery testing cost?
£3,500 to £8,000. We agree the exact number before any work starts, so there are no open ended day rates.
How long does disaster recovery testing take?
Most work of this kind is live within three to four weeks. We give you a date before we begin and tell you early if anything threatens it.
Do you work outside Edinburgh?
Yes. We are based in Edinburgh and work on site across the Lothians, Fife and Glasgow, and remotely across the United Kingdom.
Disaster recovery testing in your area
Same service, same prices, wherever you are. On site across central Scotland and remotely across the rest of the UK.
Disaster recovery testing in EdinburghDisaster recovery testing in LeithDisaster recovery testing in FifeDisaster recovery testing in Livingston and West LothianDisaster recovery testing in GlasgowDisaster recovery testing in DundeeDisaster recovery testing in Aberdeen and the north eastDisaster recovery testing in StirlingDisaster recovery testing in FalkirkDisaster recovery testing in Perth and PerthshireDisaster recovery testing in LondonDisaster recovery testing in ManchesterDisaster recovery testing in BirminghamDisaster recovery testing in LeedsDisaster recovery testing in LiverpoolDisaster recovery testing in SheffieldDisaster recovery testing in BristolDisaster recovery testing in Newcastle upon TyneDisaster recovery testing in NottinghamDisaster recovery testing in LeicesterDisaster recovery testing in CoventryDisaster recovery testing in CardiffDisaster recovery testing in SwanseaDisaster recovery testing in BelfastDisaster recovery testing in SouthamptonDisaster recovery testing in BrightonDisaster recovery testing in ReadingDisaster recovery testing in Inverness
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