I should chime in with this...
The reason we religiously restore (to another machine in the past) is because we've always had problems with the restore process in the past. Without a lot of consistency, some .enc files restore, while others do not. Sometimes the restore process goes to about 33% (my guesstimate) before failing, while other instances fail at around 90%. Interestingly enough - when it fails late in the game, the data *appears* to be all there.
This is unnerving, to say the least. That's why we would always test the integrity of the .enc file via the restore process. If you're not spot-checking your backup files every so often, I think you're doing yourself a disservice.
Everyone should take their backup files *offsite*. We do it once a week, and should probably do it more frequently. We got hit with Ransomware once, and w/o the offsite backup, we would have been in a world of hurt.
