The question is what you really want:
  - To restore the consolidated index backups (the fastest method) nsrck is the 
actual procedure
  - scanner rebuilds the index from the embedded metadata from each media where 
the client data has been backed up to. Of course this takes much longer.

I do not see a problem to test the recover method:
  - make sure that the client index is not used
  - check the size with "nsrls client_name"
  - rename the /nsr/index/client_name directory
  - check with "nsrls client_name" - the expected response is " not found"
  - run "nsrck -L2 client" to recreate the index header
  - check with "nsrls client_name" - the expected response is " 0 entries"
  - recover the CFI with nsrck 
  - check with "nsrls client_name" - you should now see the old size
  - verify whether you can use the CFI during a recovery
  - delete the renamed index directory  

Not officially supported - but it should work.

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