Customer Reviews

Norton Save and Restore V2.0

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I have two LAN connected PC's and backup critical data frequently. My goal was to purchase a software package that would allow me to backup the entire contents of both PC's to an external USB hard drive. This capability would enable me to restore either individual files or the entire contents of either PC in the event of loss of an internal hard drive or a file corruption problem.

My research of backup software packages found that most were extremely expensive and did far more than the actual backup and restore capability that I needed. The one exception was Norton's Save and Restore program. I downloaded the 30-day trial version and installed it on both PC's.

Norton's Save and Restore package is highly configurable and enabled me to save full images of the C: (current software and data) and D: (original PC software) drives to the external drive. Additionally, the package allows me to select specific directories (e.g. My Documents, Desktop, etc) that can also be included in the backup. Various frequency-of-backup options are supported including daily, weekly, and monthly backups. I have configured the application on both PCs to do complete backups on a weekly basis and backups of the My Documents directory on a daily basis.

The package also provides support for a wide variety of backup destinations including USB External Hard Drives, CD, and DVD devices. I have been using an External 500GB USB drive for backups. The backups occur transparently on both PC's as long as Windows NT is available on both systems. (Norton Save and Restore also supports other Windows platforms including Vista.) The only manual operation I perform is to occasionally check to ensure that the backups took place successfully. Norton provides extensive status information both in graphical format and old fashion log files for you to check.

The only disappointment I experienced was that I could not backup both PC's from a Save and Restore program located on one PC. Two separate versions of the program are required to backup the two PC's. All things considered this is a minor problem. Given the cost of a single copy, even the purchase of two copies is considerably cheaper than most of the other packages available.

I recommend consideration of this package to anyone interested in simply backing up and restoring data without a lot of extra bells and whistles.

I use Save & Restore 2.0 (and before that V1.0).

When my system got corrupted after installing MS trial software (and MS tech support was unable to resolve the issue) I was able to quickly restore my system (Vista OS) with Norton's Save & Restore 2.0 and the CD boot disk that comes with the software.

Users need to realize that this is an image program. It creates a compressed image of your hard disk and does incremental updates of the original image. You can restore it to another hard drive from the bakup HD but you can't simply plug the external harddrive in and expect to use it from the backup harddrive. The software is not designed for this.

If you want to do this you need software such as CMS's Bouncback Professional, which maintains an uncompressed copy of your HD that can be used a boot drive.

That said, Save & Restore is simple and works. It does what it says it does. More importantly, since it stores a compress image it allows me to keep 5 copes of my system (covering 5 weeks) on a single external HD.

I recommend that one use at least two backup solutions and a UPS. I use Save & Restore (to an external Seagate USB HD), Mozy; an online service, and a APC UPS to filter the power and provide protection against power surges. Additionally, I copy important files to a CD monthly.

The following review is based on the Save and Restore v2.0 included with Norton Systemworks 2009 Premier Edition.

Congratulations to the Symantec team on a job well done--great product and great support!!! My incentive to purchase this software was not only to keep my computer running, which it does easily, but to restore my operating system and other programs without reloading everything from the CDs. The thought of reloading all the registration/activation codes and customization settings was depressing. I needed to replace two 5-yr old hard drives and since they were still functional, if the software didn't work for any reason, I could just reinstall them. I am a wannabe geek with a long way to go to understand how these things work. I used the process below:

1. Using Save and Restore, I created my backups of both drives on a 500 Gb USB powered hard drive. The backups are easy with the 2009 edition, which resolved the unsuccessful backups prevalent in previous editions. (I am using a 2004 Dell Precision 650 Workstation running Windows XP SP-3 and Norton Internet Security 2009. I have two large programs that are tricky to install and are no longer supported by the companies if anything went wrong, and very expensive to replace.)

2. I created a bootable Symantec Recovery Disk (SRD) using a rewriteable CD so it could be customized. I used a downloaded version of this software, which provided an ".iso" SRD file. This file was copied to the hard drive, then double-clicked, which automatically activated my CD burner (Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 Basic) to create the bootable CD, with the appropriate settings filled in!! I left the bootable CD in the CD burner, and created a custom SRD with my drivers on it, using the Save and Restore File/Create Recovery Disk command. Then I tested the CD by rebooting the computer to the CD and saw the recovery tools menu appear.

3. I replaced the hard drives. I added RAID to the hard drives using a menu during boot-up. This would not be necessary if you are not running RAID.

4. I restarted the computer with the SRD in the drive. After the recovery software came up, I plugged in and turned on the 500Gb USP powered hard drive with my system backups on it, and waited until it was recognized by the system. I selected "recover my computer". The wizard walked me through the process. I selected the latest backup to restore. In about 10 minutes, my entire system was on the new drives, identical to the old drives. Now that was easy!!!

Installation and Tech Support: The software allows 3 computers to use it. I installed it on a desktop and two laptops (different makers). The first two were flawless. The third one would not install properly and we eventually determined that it had trouble deleting a previous version. I used Online Chat technical support and allowed the analyst to access the computer to fix it. Although it took 5 tries to fix it, each analyst answered promptly (within 10 minutes), and tried to fix it. I quickly realized that my definition of the problem determined the solution applied. Looking back on it, the 5 tries were partly the result of my learning curve to describe the problem. I found if I don't get what I need, I take a break, and use Online Chat again. The 24/7 support is wonderful.

What good can I say about this product? They really screwed up everything that could be screwed up. The interface is cluttered. Options that should be together are spread throughout the program. It won't back up a network-attached drive, which makes it pretty close to worthless for people with home networks.

If you want to cherry pick your backups, you might expect a tree view where you could click all the folders you want to back up. Sorry. You pick them through a chooser, and it is a real pain. Who thought of this?!

It also mysteriously takes forever on occasion. No, it's not a full backup that is the reason. It sometimes compares the system to an incremental to begin the incremental, and that can take longer than a full backup. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, you might as well do a full.

If you change drive letters on a drive, it stupidly can't figure out how to do the backups, and you can't just provide a new drive letter. The solution is to start the backups from scratch, near as I can tell.

It is really fast for drive-to-drive copying...but it fails 100% of the time for me. After 99% is finished, it always complains about a sector allocation (on a verified good drive) and dies.

I've had it with Symantec. Everything I've bought from them in the last few years is on the shelf. No more.

My main hard drive was failing, I had to clone it to a new one, quick!

I had rebuilt my computer recently, so my installed copy of Norton Save and Restore no longer thought it was Activated. I tried the online activation system with the key in the packaging, but the online system didn't work. I called the 1-800 number for phone activation, there was no option for activating Norton products.

Finally I got ahold of someone, who gave me a different number to call. I called the new number, told them what I needed, I was put on hold multiple times while they tried to figure it out, transferred me to three different people. Finally after being on the phone for an hour and talking to four people, they were able to activate my software by phone.

I tried cloning my failing main drive to a new one.. but, Norton wants to write a log file to the drive first, which it had trouble doing, because the drive is failing! Because it could not WRITE to the drive, it refused to clone it!

I gave up on Norton, found some FREE drive cloning software from Easus, that boots from a CD (does not need to be installed on the drive you are trying to copy). It worked perfectly, but it makes me wonder if all those hours wasted on Norton could have caused my drive to crash before I got it copied safely.

Also, Norton Save and Restore installs some kind of virus protection software which I did not want, and slows the whole system down, and keeps asking me to renew my subscription. All I want to do is clone a drive! It should not be that complicated!

I guess Peter Norton is happy living in his big mansion on Martha's Vineyard, with all the money he made selling out to Symantec. Well, his name is still on this software, and I bought it because I trusted the Norton name. Never again! From now on I will know there is always a cheaper and better solution out there than any Norton product.

Most new computers will come with Windows 7 installed. This product is NOT compatible with Windows 7 32bit OR 64bit systems. Symantec does not plan on making it compatible with Windows 7 so don't waste your money. If you plan on investing your money spend it on a software that will support the current operating system in the market. I paid for the $60.00 for this software last year and now this year it is worthless to me with Windows 7. Buyer beware, Symantec wants to make money off of you with every new operating system release.

I'm glad I got this as a gift and didn't waste my own money on this piece of junk. Like other reviewers, half the time it can't find the drive I'm storing the backups on. I'm using a network-attached storage drive and have had no problems with my drive from any other program. It took three tries before it completed a full backup of my C drive. I have it set to back up every Sunday night at 10 pm and keep at most 3 recovery points. Well my NAS drive is cluttered with these recovery points and every time I start my computer I get a popup window telling me S&R is starting a full backup of my C drive and asking if I want to allow the backup now. I click NO, and almost immediately the same window pops up. If I click YES or ignore the window, it creates a recovery point (when it can find my NAS drive, that is) and then the window pops up again. The first time, I sat for ten minutes clicking NO over and over again while trying to search Norton's website for an answer as to why this was happening and how to stop it. Finally I found in the user manual instructions on how to run services.msc and disable the program. I have to do this every time I start my computer now unless I want to be endlessly annoyed by popup windows. Every time I go into the settings, they're different than what I have set. Not that it really matters since it doesn't listen to the settings anyway. I just keep the program disabled all the time and then enable it on Sundays at 10 pm when I actually want it to do the backup. So much for automatic scheduling. I suppose if something does happen to my hard drive I'll be glad I have this program, but for now it's just a giant headache.

I do all my PC assemblies and Software installations for my company and I have a ton of experience here. I am about 9 out of 10 in experience and troubleshooting and I am not bragging either.
I installed this thing with the idea of a simple "ONE TIME Backup" for a newly formatted OS of Vista and it did work somewhat. The problem came with one PC which could NOT boot the recovery CD to a Norton Menu for recovering the OS.
I called Symantic and here is the insanity that followed.
First there was an issue called "Driver Mining" with creating the recovery CD which should be child's play. The CD needed to be created since one PC would not boot the Save and restore CD. So now after 5 calls to Norton they are still doing research on this but it tells me that they have NO idea as s to what is happening to this lousy software product.
I have currently 3 PCs all perfect with Save and Restore on them and ALL are having the Driver Mining issues now. One is even a WINXP PC so its a problem with the program.
On top of that I tried installing the program using Norton security running the Virus protection also thinking Mcaffee could be the problem. Then I found out that when installing Save and Restore with Norton Internet Security in the background I was having catastrophic crashes now. I removed Norton security and it went in just fine then. These people are not even compatible with there own software too.
Finally they offered me a New version of Ghost since they are lost after not returning 4 phone calls to date. This company as far as I am concerned is History and is NOT worth even considering with any software at all now.
Between the rudeness of not returning calls and spending countless hours with them for nothing I am officially done with Symantic as a company now.
I used to admire their Internet Security years ago but no more.
If you do not need the Recovery CD I guess this could work for you but it just shows me they cannot produce software that works anymore.
buy this at your own risk and I think soon Symantic will go the way of most pathetic companies unless corporate business keeps them alive.

Do not buy this product!

It is not, and will never be, supported by Windows 7.

I bought this product a few months ago, and it is useless for me now. Norton will only give me a $20 discount to buy 'Ghost 15' which is their only backup solution that will be supported by Windows 7. This means that after I paid $50 for this product they want me to pay another $50 to make it work.

Note that most versions of Vista and Windows 7 already come with a built-in backup solution.

works great when it works. Inconsistent back ups of my hard drive usually work but when they don't, might as well bring a sleeping bag. Tried to reinstall, which initially solved problem a few times but then even did an "update" which left me disappointed. Save your money before you lose your sanity.