The only way to test restoring a backup is to actually restore it. And for that, you do need spare hardware.

So, to answer your question, I don’t test my home backups either. I reckon pretty much no one is dedicated enough to do that.

I’m hoping, if shit really hits the fan that I can still pick out my important files and just manually re-setup the rest of the system. So, with a longer downtime in that sense.

That strategy is just absolutely not viable for companies, where downtimes are more expensive than spare hardware, and where you really can’t tell users you restored some files, they should do the rest.