A. The only way to be sure your backup is working is to do a test restore. This involves restoring the data onto a different computer which is off the network and checking if all the information that should be there is really there. Are details of yesterday's consultations present? What about information from last month and last year? What about Word referral letters and scanned documents? All present? Great! Ask your hardware support company or your software vendor to do a test restore for you. This could form part of a general information security audit as described in the document No Data No Business. This ICT security guidelines document was circulated to GPs in February 2008 and is available online here.