( 10 reviews )
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Posted: Apr 5 2009
In my case Save and Restore was purchased for the purpose of backing up all the hard drives on three computers. The copy I purchased was 3 user version bundled with Norton 360 a couple of years ago. Norton 360 does incremental backups on my data files (My documents, Email, Explorer Favorites, recent downloaded files, music and picture files). My tax data gets burned to three different CDs right after my taxes are done and gets removed from the hard drive. Complete drive backups by S&R are done every 4 months. On the three computers a combined total of 18 backups have been done without any problems. I might not have encountered some of the problems mentioned by others here since my needs are fairly simple. Using Windows XP Home or Professional comments about using this program with Vista cannot be made. The hard drive on my notebook computer was recently replaced and Save and Restore preformed flawlessly. Everything was restored to the new and larger hard drive without having to match the partition size of the replaced drive. Since this was a planned replacement I immediately did the save and restore and skipped using the incremental backup from 360. It was poorly planned actually, as I should have tested the 360 backup files while still having a fully functional original drive. In case you are interested the madness in generic terms behind my backup program is presented below. The first and most important comment is the computers I have are not used for business, except for a limited number of emails. Having both a large collection music and picture files that are constantly being added to the following backup procedure was devised. Pictures and music added to the computer go into the music and picture folders. These are the ones backed up by Norton 360. For one computer the free online storage is 2 GB, for two or three computers it is a total of 4 GB. Every four months a total drive backup with S&R is done. Before doing so the picture and music files are copied to the Bmusic and Bpicture folders. After a successful backup all the files in the music and pictures folders are deleted. Any software installed from either CD or download is also stored separately and moved once a total backup is done. This may sound complicated, but it is quite easy to do and has worked well for me. The backup drive for a total drive backup should be at least 1.5 times the size of the drives being backed up. This will allow enough room for two backup copies of the drives using the default S&R settings. As backups sometime fail, it is a good idea to always have a minimum of two copies. What I did was make two total backups upon getting the S&R program followed by deleting and replacing the oldest backup every four months. The time it takes to backup a disk drive is not strictly based upon the total size of the backup, but the number of files as well. The speed of the drives being backed up from the speed of the drives having the backup written to along with the speed of the CPU, also figure into this equation. A SATA II external hard drive will have a speed about 7.5 times that of a USB drive but may not give backup speeds 7.5 times faster than a USB drive on some systems due to the weakest link item. Be sure to make a backup copy of the Save and Recover program disk. Without this disc any backups made would be useless. It would also be a good idea to boot your computer from this disc at least once to verify your backup is going to be useable when needed. All the Best
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Posted: Mar 20 2009
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.
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Posted: Mar 17 2009
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.
