Do not scan them with any antivirus software!
Since Time Machine backups can be fragile, never let anything other than Time Machine mess with them. In my case, that is Time Machine to a Time Capsule plus an external drive, and Carbon Copy Cloner to a couple additional external drives. With any backup system, it's important to have at least two different, redundant backups, created by at least two different backup programs. But then, when it's needed most, it fails and cannot be used to restore data.įor this reason, my advice is as follows:
I've seen cases where people have somehow edited these backups outside of Time Machine itself, and the backup continues to work for a while. Worse, it can do so without making the problem immediately obvious. Allowing a third-party program to alter the backups in any way can destroy the entire backup set.
Time Machine backups have a special, unique structure that can be very fragile if it is disturbed, and changes should not be made to Time Machine backups by anything other than Time Machine. You should not allow anything to scan Time Machine backups! Endpoint Detection & Response for Servers
