Certainly the quicker you discover a problem, the more likely you are to be able to fix it. Different backup strategies can help. For example, my backups are automated. I keep daily snapshots for six computers on my backup server. Those rollover and are replaced with newer backups when the disks get full. Currently I have a bit less than a years worth of daily file backups for each computer available. And half a years worth of monthly image backups for the Windows computers (I don't do image backups for the Linux ones). This is a more sophisticated backup system than most people have at home.