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BORG-CHECK(1) borg backup tool BORG-CHECK(1)

NAME

borg-check - Check repository consistency

SYNOPSIS

borg [common options] check [options]

DESCRIPTION

The check command verifies the consistency of a repository and its archives. It consists of two major steps:

1.
Checking the consistency of the repository itself. This includes checking the file magic headers, and both the metadata and data of all objects in the repository. The read data is checked by size and hash. Bit rot and other types of accidental damage can be detected this way. Running the repository check can be split into multiple partial checks using --max-duration. When checking a <ssh://> remote repository, please note that the checks run on the server and do not cause significant network traffic.
2.
Checking consistency and correctness of the archive metadata and optionally archive data (requires --verify-data). This includes ensuring that the repository manifest exists, the archive metadata chunk is present, and that all chunks referencing files (items) in the archive exist. This requires reading archive and file metadata, but not data. To scan for archives whose entries were lost from the archive directory, pass --find-lost-archives. It requires reading all data and is hence very time consuming. To additionally cryptographically verify the file (content) data integrity, pass --verify-data, which is even more time consuming.

When checking archives of a remote repository, archive checks run on the client machine because they require decrypting data and therefore the encryption key.


Both steps can also be run independently. Pass --repository-only to run the repository checks only, or pass --archives-only to run the archive checks only.

The --max-duration option can be used to split a long-running repository check into multiple partial checks. After the given number of seconds the check is interrupted. The next partial check will continue where the previous one stopped, until the full repository has been checked. Assuming a complete check would take 7 hours, then running a daily check with --max-duration=3600 (1 hour) would result in one full repository check per week. Doing a full repository check aborts any previous partial check; the next partial check will restart from the beginning. With partial repository checks you can run neither archive checks, nor enable repair mode. Consequently, if you want to use --max-duration you must also pass --repository-only, and must not pass --archives-only, nor --repair.

Warning: Please note that partial repository checks (i.e. running it with --max-duration) can only perform non-cryptographic checksum checks on the repository files. Enabling partial repository checks excepts archive checks for the same reason. Therefore partial checks may be useful with very large repositories only where a full check would take too long.

The --verify-data option will perform a full integrity verification (as opposed to checking just the xxh64) of data, which means reading the data from the repository, decrypting and decompressing it. It is a complete cryptographic verification and hence very time consuming, but will detect any accidental and malicious corruption. Tamper-resistance is only guaranteed for encrypted repositories against attackers without access to the keys. You can not use --verify-data with --repository-only.

The --find-lost-archives option will also scan the whole repository, but tells Borg to search for lost archive metadata. If Borg encounters any archive metadata that doesn't match with an archive directory entry (including soft-deleted archives), it means that an entry was lost. Unless borg compact is called, these archives can be fully restored with --repair. Please note that --find-lost-archives must read a lot of data from the repository and is thus very time consuming. You can not use --find-lost-archives with --repository-only.

About repair mode

The check command is a readonly task by default. If any corruption is found, Borg will report the issue and proceed with checking. To actually repair the issues found, pass --repair.

NOTE:

--repair is a POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS FEATURE and might lead to data loss! This does not just include data that was previously lost anyway, but might include more data for kinds of corruption it is not capable of dealing with. BE VERY CAREFUL!


Pursuant to the previous warning it is also highly recommended to test the reliability of the hardware running Borg with stress testing software. This especially includes storage and memory testers. Unreliable hardware might lead to additional data loss.

It is highly recommended to create a backup of your repository before running in repair mode (i.e. running it with --repair).

Repair mode will attempt to fix any corruptions found. Fixing corruptions does not mean recovering lost data: Borg can not magically restore data lost due to e.g. a hardware failure. Repairing a repository means sacrificing some data for the sake of the repository as a whole and the remaining data. Hence it is, by definition, a potentially lossy task.

In practice, repair mode hooks into both the repository and archive checks:

1.
When checking the repository's consistency, repair mode removes corrupted objects from the repository after it did a 2nd try to read them correctly.
2.
When checking the consistency and correctness of archives, repair mode might remove whole archives from the manifest if their archive metadata chunk is corrupt or lost. Borg will also report files that reference missing chunks.

If --repair --find-lost-archives is given, previously lost entries will be recreated in the archive directory. This is only possible before borg compact would remove the archives' data completely.

OPTIONS

See borg-common(1) for common options of Borg commands.

options

only perform repository checks
only perform archives checks
perform cryptographic archive data integrity verification (conflicts with --repository-only)
attempt to repair any inconsistencies found
attempt to find lost archives
do only a partial repo check for max. SECONDS seconds (Default: unlimited)

Archive filters

only consider archives matching all patterns. see "borg help match-archives".
Comma-separated list of sorting keys; valid keys are: timestamp, archive, name, id, tags, host, user; default is: timestamp
consider first N archives after other filters were applied
consider last N archives after other filters were applied
consider archives between the oldest archive's timestamp and (oldest + TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.
consider archives between the newest archive's timestamp and (newest - TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.
consider archives older than (now - TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.
consider archives newer than (now - TIMESPAN), e.g. 7d or 12m.

SEE ALSO

borg-common(1)

AUTHOR

The Borg Collective

2025-05-05