I'm looking around and testing a number of programs to update my desktop backup capabilities. I downloaded the trial version of Norton Save and Restore v2, to test it out. I ran into a number of issues that are really troubling to me (my desktop runs WinXP with all the latest updates, I have an internal harddrive with 3 partitions, and an external harddrive (USB) that I use to house my backup and other misc items.). I also run NIS2008 on the system. When trying to test NSRv2, I ran into the following (I have 42GB free on the external drive):

-I initially tried to create a Recovery Point as recommended when starting the program - the process was extremely slow and eventually filled up the external drive and aborted (42GBs!). Is this normal? Why consume so much space? I set it to use medium compression (program recommended "low".

- I tried again, but told it to back up specific files and folder. I tagged the C, D, E drives (and their subfolders) for backup onto the external drive (F). It completed the backup very slowly - took an extremely long time. And consumed 35GBs of the disk (The current backup I use, Backup MyPC, backup the drives into about 16GBs).

- After the backup completed, I wanted to test restoring certain files and folders, but could not understand the restore process or find the files/floders I wanted to restore. How does one tag particular files/floders for restore?

What am I doing wrong with the backup program? What am I missing? My drives have used - C (20GB), D (5GB), E (4GB) - for a total of 29GB and with compression, should be far less than that on the backup.

Any thoughts/tips/suggestions appreciated.

Does anyone have experience with Norton Save and Restore and can assist me with the above problem?

Gumboman

gumboman, read and printed off your post. I will have a look at it tomorrow. Bit late here now (21:40 27/05). I will also take some screen shots for you.

Great! Thanks for taking the time to assist. Anything you can provide/suggest is appreciated.

Gumboman

gumboman, a quick question. Do you have the manual and read it. If not here is a link to download it.

http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/home_homeoffice/products/nsr/nsr_2/manuals.html

I think I can see your problem. Your backup drive is fully dedicated to Norton S&R. This can be overcome by opening the program and clicking on 'Status'. From there go to 'Manage Backup Storage'. There you are able to control your settings by going to 'Options'.

Hopefully that has cleared up one point.

The other is the scheduling of disk and file backups. These can be controlled by going to 'Backup' and then 'Edit My Backup Schedules'. There you can set when to backup your drive(s), number of restore points you wish to set and file backups and when for each. Restore points do NOT mean 'system restore points' - they are restore points set by Norton S&R.

Post back if you have problems. If you want pictures (screen shots) see PM.

Peter,

I think I am getting the hang of it. Taking some learning and figuring out how to deal with Files/Folders Backups vs Drive Backups (I'm a bit more interested right now in Files/Folders backups to ensure data is safe and can deal with learning and using Drive Backups later).

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Still don't know if I will stay with it, but it does get updated periodically and my current backup software doesn't.

Glad to see you are getting somewhere. The email address you supplied me was invalid so I sent you another PM. Did you receive that?