That's basically what we did. The problem here was that processing was split into eight or so steps across ~25 streams of work between the backup steps and was

That's basically what we did. The problem here was that processing was split into eight or so steps across ~25 streams of work between the backup steps and was far enough along the output files were generated, revving their generation number. Those files fed something like thirty follow-on jobs, so all the file generations had to be backed out before processing could run. It all seemed horribly complicated and brittle to me at the time. Not sorry I don't work with it any more.