This is a bit off topic but probably reassuring to those who back up AC including Imported Items. I have been concerned because my daily backup file (.enc) was so large, approaching 25 GB. So I did a trial restore from my ".enc" file on a non-networked computer. It takes over an hour for the AC Backup Restore program to complete, and you need considerable disk space to un-zip and unencrypt the .enc file (about 3 x the size of the .enc file). But it worked flawlessly on two separate backups.
John - you point out an important aspect of backups - in fact, after making sure the backup runs, the key is testing them. We have found that some restore, and sometimes they don't. We had a client that had ~18G backup, and it didn't restore for whatever reason. Another that he only way to get a successful backup was to run a SQLServer .bak.
Point being, if you don't test your backups once a month/quarter, you'll never know whether they are actually going to work.
For large backups, you can sync your ImportItems across the network, and just backup the other aspects of the database. This will give you are far faster backup/restore time, and does seem to improve the odds that the restore will work.
