Most small teams have backups. Almost none have a restore. A backup you have never restored is a rumor you tell yourself — and the day you need it is the worst day to find out.
Run this drill once a quarter. It takes 20 minutes and it is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy.
The drill
Choose a random live file — ask someone else to pick. Random is the point.
Restore it to a scratch location. Never on top of the live copy.
Time it. That number is your real RTO — it belongs in your incident plan, not a vendor brochure.
Open the file. Backups can restore corrupted. Verify content, not dashboards.
Write the gaps down. Missing credentials? One person holds the password? That list is your next ops sprint.
The full kit
The complete version — incident timeline template, offline fallback checklist, post-incident report format — is here:
First 30 Minutes: Emergency Response Kit
More playbooks: https://hive80lab.gumroad.com
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