Time Machine archive: safe way to test it's OK?
 

Just used SuperDuper's SmartUpdate to backup my TimeMachine drive - took around a quarter of the time it took Carbon Copy Cloner to do a block-by-block copy, so really really happy.

But - how can I be sure the backup is fully functional? Time Machine is a persnickety beast, and I'm not about to try and guess the procedure using commonsense! Anyone already taken the plunge, and can lay out the steps that definitely work - and which allow one to revert to the main Time Machine drive afterwards?

Well, you could certainly just point to it with Time Machine and see when your oldest backup is, for example... but if the copy was successful I'm pretty sure it's just fine.

Thanks for this! I also found that if you right-click the Time Machine symbol in the dock there's a 'Browse other Time Machine disks..' option, which worked fine for me, so the smart copy is obviously fine.

One thing - going by the flashing lights on the two drives, to get back to viewing your main Time Machine drive you have to go back to 'Browse other Time Machine disks..' and actively select it. Counterintuitive, at least to me, so worth mentioning.

Anyway, thanks again!