I read many posts talking about importance of having multiple copies. but the problem is, even if you have multiple copies, how do you make sure that EVERY FILE in each copy is good. For instance, imagine you want to view a photo taken a few years ago, when you checkout copy 1 of your backup, you find it already corrupted. Then you turn to copy 2/3, find this photo is good. OK you happily discard copy 1 of backup and keep 2/3. Next day you want to view another photo 2, and find that photo 2 in backup copy 2 is dead but good in copy 3, so you keep copy 3, discard copy 3. Now some day you find something is wrong in copy 3, and you no longer have any copies with everything intact.
Someone may say, when we find that some files for copy 1 are dead, we make a new copy 4 from copy 2 (or 3), but problem is, there are already dead files in this copy 2, so this new copy would not solve the issue above.
Just wonder how do you guys deal with this issue? Any idea would be appreciated.
if you use real backups, and not just simple copies, then your backup software has verify function. For simple copies you should use hash files or something that can build a hash database and verify it. Btw. you should already use hash checking for live data anyway. For archiving you can create winrar archives with 10% recovery record, so it can self-verify and self-repair easily.