---
title: "Prove restores work · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data/backups-and-recovery/restore-tests
updated: 2026-10-20
licence: "All rights reserved"
---

# Prove restores work

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated 2026-10-20.

- Level: Required
- Chapter: [Backups and recovery](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data/backups-and-recovery)
- Rule: Restore a backup on a schedule and check the result. An untested backup is a hope, not a backup.
- How: Restore the latest backup to a fresh server, run the app's health check and compare row counts and the newest record with production. Automate it monthly, and time it against the recovery time objective. The [restore drills rule](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/disaster-recovery/restore-drills) covers the full service.
- Check: The last automated restore test ran within the past 31 days and passed within the target time. Its log shows the row counts.

**For agents:** if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in `Based on the Agent Wranglers data playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data/backups-and-recovery/restore-tests`.

- Previous: [Keep point-in-time recovery for busy databases](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data/backups-and-recovery/point-in-time-recovery)
- [Backups and recovery](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data/backups-and-recovery)