Entered CNET Catalog: 03/09/2006
SKU: 37648268523
Manufacturer: Symantec Corporation
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Manufacturer description
Built on Norton Ghost technology, Norton Save & Restore safeguards photos and important files; schedules automatic backups; restores from system failures; automatically monitors and optimizes backup disk space; encrypts backups to help keep them secure.CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 03/21/2006
Installation is similar across all Symantec products. However, this time there is a pause during the installation when a dialog box asks you to validate your hardware in use against the database of drivers stored on the Symantec recovery disc. This good because should you ever need to boot directly from the Save & Restore disc, you'll know that afterward your monitor, mice, and other peripherals will work properly.
This product also has the same look and feel as Symantec's Norton Internet Security line of products, so you'll see a link to the Norton Protection Center above the Save & Restore button. The Norton Protection Center will be confusing for some. For example, Norton had big red Xs over antivirus and firewall protection, yet our test machine was protected--with products from other vendors. Clicking any of the red Xs for "more information" simply delivers you to the Symantec online store and a description of the appropriate Norton solution (Norton AntiVirus, Norton SystemWorks, and so on). While advertising one's own product line is legit, advertising under the guise of "protection" is misleading when adequate protection already exists.
As previously stated, Norton Save & Restore offers all the functionality of Norton Ghost, plus additional features we'd like to have seen in the last version. Like Ghost, Norton Save & Restore lets you create and restore a compressed image of all your data on your hard drive or any other storage media such as CD, DVD, or USB flash drive. What you get with Save & Restore that you don't with Ghost 10 is the capability to select individual files for either backup or restoration.
Another improvement is the addition of helpful wizards. Say you've never backed up your data before. A wizard within Norton Save & Restore automatically suggests a simple and straightforward weekly schedule, which you can alter to suite your work habits. Click the suggested time, the types of file formats to back up, and the location of the backup, and in a short while you'll have a customized backup schedule. Another wizard helpfully suggests drives available to store your backup and various compression options. We were able to start backing up our 11GB hard drive within a minute; our complete initial backup required 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, online FAQ support is virtually nonexistent for Norton Save & Restore, although there are free options for online chat and e-mail. Calling Symantec's technical support remains outrageously pricey. Live technician service is available 24/7, however Symantec will charge you a flat $29.95 per incident.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
User Rating: 
1/10
Atrocious !!!
Pros: None i can think of. It does not work!!!
Cons: A total waist of time. Hundreds of dollars in wasted hours trying to recover my data. The worst program I've used in the last fifteen years.
Review:
STAY AWAY FROM THIS CRAP
User Rating: 1/10
BE WARNED: ON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT! NORTON SAVE & RESTORE
Pros: It might work -- if I could get the GD thing installed (NORTON SAVE & RESTORE)
Cons: Norton's service is a JOKE. The only reason you would want to experience it is to see just how incmompetent tech support can be -- and then you'll have that reference point.
Review:
I spent four hours in chat and on the phone, and more hours uninstalling and reinstalling this gigantic POS. I wouldn't purchase a coat hanger from these incompetent, untrained, mismanaged neanderthals. Save yourself the trouble -- BUY SOMETHING ELSE, ANYTHING ELSE. Unless you are really lonely and want to chat with someone 1000 miles away who doesn't understand anything about computers, computer logic, software, etc. If you are into self abuse, you might like this, otherwise, DON'T BUY IT.
User Rating: 
2/10
Norton save and restore (NSR) sucks! Rating is 0!
Pros: It has nothing to recommend it! It does more harm that good!
Cons: It is hopelessly bad!
Review:
I bought Norton system works and installed save and restore. I finally realized that my computer had s--l-o-w-e-d down badly whenever NSR was runing. So I reset the scheduling in NSR and ran an initial backup again. That backup had run for about seven hours when I chatted with Norton (Case Number 491926484, followed by case number whoops they did'nt give me one). Jose at Norton confirmed that what I was seeing was nothing unusual. That's the way it works. Wow!!!! I let the backup continue running all night. It had completed the next morning. It trashed all the previous backups in my backup file and DID NOT create a new backup! I uninstalled NSR and installed my old copy of Norton Ghost 9.0 which I had been very happy with. It would not work because it was no longer registered! When I chatted with Norton the second time with all my woes they could not help me with Ghost 9.0 because they no longer supported it.
I had already turned off Norton Go-Back in System Works because it was more of a pain in the neck than anything else. Other vendor's programs seem to do the rest of the System Works features better. so I asked Norton to cancel my subscription to System works and give me a refund. They agreed!
I am going to avoid Symantec and Norton products from now on. I think that they have lost their edge. Putting out a product like NSR and having the gall to charge for it is unconsionable!!!!
I had already turned off Norton Go-Back in System Works because it was more of a pain in the neck than anything else. Other vendor's programs seem to do the rest of the System Works features better. so I asked Norton to cancel my subscription to System works and give me a refund. They agreed!
I am going to avoid Symantec and Norton products from now on. I think that they have lost their edge. Putting out a product like NSR and having the gall to charge for it is unconsionable!!!!
User Rating: 1/10
It Doesn't Work, >>> DON'T BUY
Pros: box has nice color
Cons: DOES NOT WORK
Review:
Can't install properly,
Live Update can't run,
Send Feedback can't connect,
Backup run terminate with errors,
Can't find my external drives,
No Symantec email for support,
Paid 3 hour long-distance phone to Symantec support guy who could not fix it and told me "Save & Restore version 2.0 just doesn't work"
Live Update can't run,
Send Feedback can't connect,
Backup run terminate with errors,
Can't find my external drives,
No Symantec email for support,
Paid 3 hour long-distance phone to Symantec support guy who could not fix it and told me "Save & Restore version 2.0 just doesn't work"
User Rating: 1/10
Do not use it if you care for your files.
Pros: Configuration is relatively easy.
Cons: A never-ending stream of errors. Cannot handle deep paths (over 250 chars you're screwed)...
Review:
This software is a nightmare. Although it may work with very few files, I did not try.
I would give Norton S&R a negative rating: this software is a danger to your files. (Not lower than -5 though, because it does not actively destroys your data.
I would give Norton S&R a negative rating: this software is a danger to your files. (Not lower than -5 though, because it does not actively destroys your data.
User Rating: 1/10
DON'T BUY!!!
Pros: Can't think of any since product didnt' work well
Cons: Bugs, incompetent tech support
Review:
I'm a computer consultant with hundreds of clients and I usually recommend Acronis True Image to my clients for their back up solutions. I decided to try Norton Save and Restore 2.0 to see if it was any easier to use and maintain. When I tried to create a recovery CD I kept getting an error about Mining Drivers and after an hour with Symantec tech support chat the tech rep said my CD drive may not be compatible with the GEAR software they use to create the recovery CD. Anyhow, he tried to get me to email a third party company to have them check my Dell CD drive to see if it is compatible. At that point I just decided to give up and use something I know works on every computer I have ever installed it on regardless of the CD drive brand. And that product is Acronis True Image. It may not be perfect, but Acronis True Image works and works well enough to do the job.
Stay away from this Symatec product unless you feel like being a guinea pig and have a lot of time to waste trying to figure out why the product will not work.
Stay away from this Symatec product unless you feel like being a guinea pig and have a lot of time to waste trying to figure out why the product will not work.
Updated
Just a follow up note. The product did work as far as backing up goes. I had no problem there, although I only did one initial back up job. But, if you can't create a recovery CD, then it kind of defeats the purpose of being able to easily recover from a hardware or system failure.
Just a follow up note. The product did work as far as backing up goes. I had no problem there, although I only did one initial back up job. But, if you can't create a recovery CD, then it kind of defeats the purpose of being able to easily recover from a hardware or system failure.
User Rating: 
6/10
Pretty good backup for reasonable price
Pros: Backed up files/folders on schedule with no problems
Cons: Odd file storage, high resource usage
Review:
Not sure what other reviewers are testing, but it did what it was supposed to do without a hitch. However, the backed up files do not appear to keep their navigation structure, making it harder to find them to restore. In addition, it ate a lot of resources on my machine, especially for what it does.
User Rating: 2/10
Would not even install correctly.
Pros: None since it would not install
Cons: Would not install on Windows XP Service Pack 2
Review:
I did all the right steps prior to installation such as stopping spyware and anti-virus programs. Still, the program would not install to completion, getting to 100% completion on the installation progress bar and then freezing.
User Rating: 
10/10
Works fine for me
Pros: Multitude of options
Cons: None found yet
Review:
After losing a bunch of data because of careless manual back-ups and a blown RAID0 array, I converted to RAID1 and added a third internal and USB external backup drives, created multiple partitions, and dual boot.
I saved full images of clean Windows installs and full program installs for both boot partitions on both back-up drives. I use the user log-on event trigger to incremental back-up to the internal hard drive, and leave the external drive at another address.
On several blue screen occasions I have recovered by rebooting to the Windows boot partition that still functioned and restored the other boot partition.
I don't do any other operations for the two minutes that the internal incremental back-up requires.
Recovering from the internal drive, the 13 gig boot partition takes 8 minutes and the 24 gig boot partition takes 12 minutes.
Using 3 new internal and one new external drives running XP PRO on a four year old Dell XPS this program has been flawless and given me peace of mind for almost a year. Too bad it took a crash for me to get serious.
I saved full images of clean Windows installs and full program installs for both boot partitions on both back-up drives. I use the user log-on event trigger to incremental back-up to the internal hard drive, and leave the external drive at another address.
On several blue screen occasions I have recovered by rebooting to the Windows boot partition that still functioned and restored the other boot partition.
I don't do any other operations for the two minutes that the internal incremental back-up requires.
Recovering from the internal drive, the 13 gig boot partition takes 8 minutes and the 24 gig boot partition takes 12 minutes.
Using 3 new internal and one new external drives running XP PRO on a four year old Dell XPS this program has been flawless and given me peace of mind for almost a year. Too bad it took a crash for me to get serious.
User Rating: 
5/10
I like Go Back over this product.
Pros: easy to use
Cons: recovery still a question
Review:
Symantec Corp hides behind female phone operators who can only give out numbers to phones that never answer. I encountered problems installing Works and had to reinstall Internet Security, Save & Restore, and Confidential over and over again exceeding activation numbers allowed.Symantec gave me the option of spending $50.00 per software for new key numbers or send my software with proof of purchase back to symantec. I have been without the software for a month now. In the interim, I bought and installed StopZilla, PC Security Shield, and AntiFraud which I am continue to use in place of Symantec Internet Security and Confidential. I will use Works and Save & Restore when it get here if it ever gets here. Summing up everything. Symantec is a corporation that does not desire our business. There is better and cheaper software on the market.
User Rating: 2/10
Is it worth all the problems?
Pros: Never got that far !
Cons: Cannot install over previous Norton products
Review:
After a half dozen times of failed installation attempts and paying Symantec for tecnical help, I gave up. It first messed-up my CD/DVD drives and I had to go to my computer mfg. to solve the problem. Now Symantec wants me to remove GoBack (which works great) and replace it with Save&Restore. Do I dare!
User Rating: 1/10
Total Disaster
Pros: Symantec Product
Cons: Beta Release
Review:
Failed to read the warning flag!
This caused the destruction of a 40 gig and a 160 gig hard drives, loss of all data and a week of manually reloading all files and programs after installing a new hard drive.
THIS PROGRAM WILL ONLY BACK-UP TO THE DRIVE IT WAS INSTALLED FROM!!!!
This caused the destruction of a 40 gig and a 160 gig hard drives, loss of all data and a week of manually reloading all files and programs after installing a new hard drive.
THIS PROGRAM WILL ONLY BACK-UP TO THE DRIVE IT WAS INSTALLED FROM!!!!
User Rating: 
3/10
cyclic redundancy caused me to not buy
Pros: seemed easy and seemed to have lots of options
Cons: Little insight into what s/w was doing, didn't do a full computer backup across home network,
Review:
I rate this a poor because I chose not to buy it. I chose not to buy NSR because I couldn't make it do a full computer backup across my home network. My setup is trying to backup my laptop, across an 11g wireless network to a usb drive attached to another PC on the network. NSR failed the full computer backup many times giving me a "cyclic redundancy error" message. I then reformatted the usb drive as NTFS and retried a full backup. I ran chckdsk on my laptop with no errors. Same cyclic redundancy error. So I gave up.
I don't understand why the rest of my system works find and yet NSR can't finish the job. I'd like more insight into where the error is. If it's a specific file that's screwed up then tell me, often I'd be happy to just delete that one file.
I've been using a free product called Cobian Backup for about 2 years now doing incremental backups. It simply automatically copies ~40GB of pictures to that same usb drive. It's saved my bacon more that once. I tried NSR because I wanted to be able to quickly rebuild a pc and the Ghosting feature seemed like the way to go.
I highly encourage everyone to try NSR before you buy it. If it works on your setup then your are g2g. If it doesn't, then you aren't out the cash.
I'll probably try NSR again sometime, but for now I'm happy with the free solution.
I don't understand why the rest of my system works find and yet NSR can't finish the job. I'd like more insight into where the error is. If it's a specific file that's screwed up then tell me, often I'd be happy to just delete that one file.
I've been using a free product called Cobian Backup for about 2 years now doing incremental backups. It simply automatically copies ~40GB of pictures to that same usb drive. It's saved my bacon more that once. I tried NSR because I wanted to be able to quickly rebuild a pc and the Ghosting feature seemed like the way to go.
I highly encourage everyone to try NSR before you buy it. If it works on your setup then your are g2g. If it doesn't, then you aren't out the cash.
I'll probably try NSR again sometime, but for now I'm happy with the free solution.
User Rating: 5/10
Mr. Editor-What happened when you restored?
Pros: Informative review helped me decide to keep & try it.
Cons: Mr. Editor-No bottom line results experienced when restore.
Review:
I just received the software today by mail.
I was confused as to what the differences were between Ghost 10 and Save and Restore.
I finally got through by phone to Tech. Support after being on the phone for 15 minutes which isn't too bad of a wait. I would have thought that there would be a separate department to handle product information dedicated to before the sale of the myriad of products offered. Anyway, the technician explained that Save & Restore replaces Ghost 10 which they have stopped making. The Save and Restore is supposed to have all the features of Ghost 10 and more.
The important point that I wanted clarified was if the Save & Restore had the ability to save the entire HD with all the programs and restore the entire HD with all the programs and settings. And, despite my apprehensions, I hope & believe it will. As I indicated the Editor's view helped to decide to open the box and try the product. But with all the negative user reviews about their experiences with restore, I would have liked to have seen if that part was tested by the Editor. Again, I will now take it out of the box and start using it, and hopefully I'll never need to have to find out how well it can recover my PC! I will submit a review of my experience using the save functions. Since I must give a rating, I will say 5 and stay tuned!
I was confused as to what the differences were between Ghost 10 and Save and Restore.
I finally got through by phone to Tech. Support after being on the phone for 15 minutes which isn't too bad of a wait. I would have thought that there would be a separate department to handle product information dedicated to before the sale of the myriad of products offered. Anyway, the technician explained that Save & Restore replaces Ghost 10 which they have stopped making. The Save and Restore is supposed to have all the features of Ghost 10 and more.
The important point that I wanted clarified was if the Save & Restore had the ability to save the entire HD with all the programs and restore the entire HD with all the programs and settings. And, despite my apprehensions, I hope & believe it will. As I indicated the Editor's view helped to decide to open the box and try the product. But with all the negative user reviews about their experiences with restore, I would have liked to have seen if that part was tested by the Editor. Again, I will now take it out of the box and start using it, and hopefully I'll never need to have to find out how well it can recover my PC! I will submit a review of my experience using the save functions. Since I must give a rating, I will say 5 and stay tuned!
User Rating: 1/10
Sloppy and useless software, a complete ripoff
Pros: none whatsoever
Cons: It does not work
Review:
I have blown $A100 on absolutely useless software and will now have to buy something else. I have a stock-standard XP Pro installation but NortonS&R fails frequently with its own internal checking errors, memory reference exceptions, etc. eg after hours running an archive. I will never ever buy a Norton/Symantic product again!
User Rating: 2/10
Not a good first impression.
Pros: same old, same old
Cons: crashes when computer starts.
Review:
Had to enter my email address to get a trial version and this message came in the email:
"Please note: By confirming your email address and downloading this file, you are signing up to receive periodic followup emails from us."
"Please note: By confirming your email address and downloading this file, you are signing up to receive periodic followup emails from us."
User Rating: 1/10
Installation caused optical drives (CD & DVD) to be non-recognized by Win XP, making them useless.
Pros: None, won't even install.
Cons: Everything, including poor tech support,
Review:
This is a very abysmal symantec product. It won't install properly, no tech support. I am an experienced computer user and take my word, this product will cause you many headaches. I had to reformat my drive, re-install all my software to get my OS (WIN XP) to recognize my CD and DVD again. Product is basically useless. INSTALL AT YOUR OWN RISK !!!!! I read all the poor reviews, but thought that I could get it to work right using my experience and knowledge-----WRONG. Truly Abysmal.
User Rating: 1/10
Extremely buggy, very little confidence that restore will work
Pros: Easy to figure out
Cons: Bugs, poor tech support, fails to back up 25% of the time
Review:
I've been using this for about 6 months now to back up to a remote NAS. It works about 75% of the time otherwise, it reports a locked database and fails to complete. Tech support was absolutely useless in resolving and the bug remains. I'm not confident that I could actually restore files from the back up set either. There are times when it doesn't seem to show me what's there. The backup browser for file backup doesn't show a tree or anything, you must enter wildcard names and hope you know what you are looking for. The files on the backup server that it writes are also cryptic in that there is no way to look at them and figure out what is actually contained where. Again, very little confidence in it. I would stay away from this product. I'm looking for a replacement as I type.
User Rating: 2/10
Missing Key Features for Off-Line Storage
Pros: Very Simple Interface. Nothing Hidden.
Cons: No complexity - Awful Tech Support - Inadaquite DVD Support
Review:
Looking for a reliable home HD Back-up solution, without the expense and hassle of tape, I found Norton's Save and Restore to advertise all of the required features.
However, following installation the first problem was the installation of a Protection Center Service that I did not need. Installing itself in my system tray as a Service, it kept flashing a warning that I had no Virus protection. Notwithstanding the fact that I have a current version of SAV. If you tried to get rid of the warning, you were redirected to a sales URL for a new product. This "Alert" service needed to be manually disabled in Computer Management.
Once I started working with the actual Save and Restore Product, I found that it would not recognize any DVD-RW or CDR devices. After 2-hours of Googling for a solution I opened a Chat session with their India tech support. This was destined to failure...
The first question asked was the model of the drive. My reply was a "Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-110D." I was told that this was not a supported Drive... Inquiring further I was told that the "Pioneer DVR-110D" was supported, however there was no supported Pioneer drive with DVD-RW in the title... This went back-n-forth for about 40-minutes. The entire time, it was clear that the support agent was multitasking with other clients as each reply took excessively long.
The only positive? After only 20-minutes more on hold, the refund was quick.
However, following installation the first problem was the installation of a Protection Center Service that I did not need. Installing itself in my system tray as a Service, it kept flashing a warning that I had no Virus protection. Notwithstanding the fact that I have a current version of SAV. If you tried to get rid of the warning, you were redirected to a sales URL for a new product. This "Alert" service needed to be manually disabled in Computer Management.
Once I started working with the actual Save and Restore Product, I found that it would not recognize any DVD-RW or CDR devices. After 2-hours of Googling for a solution I opened a Chat session with their India tech support. This was destined to failure...
The first question asked was the model of the drive. My reply was a "Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-110D." I was told that this was not a supported Drive... Inquiring further I was told that the "Pioneer DVR-110D" was supported, however there was no supported Pioneer drive with DVD-RW in the title... This went back-n-forth for about 40-minutes. The entire time, it was clear that the support agent was multitasking with other clients as each reply took excessively long.
The only positive? After only 20-minutes more on hold, the refund was quick.
User Rating: 1/10
DONT BUY S&R!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!
Pros: I can't seem to find any.
Cons: Totally full of bugs, can't have other software installed.
Review:
I bought it to move my 40gb drive to a 320gb drive. I'll admit I had a bunch of trouble doing this but after spending an entire afternoon I was able to switch drives. After that I went to conduct a backup but the funny thing is S&R is still reporting my 40gb drive. So being a Release Engineer by trade I uninstalled the proudct, deleted the symantec folder and then checked my registry. Once I thought it was clean enough I reinstalled S&R and it still listed the 40gb drive. This to me suggests the Symantec writes registry entries that can't be removed or modified once there. These registry entries are also hidden and won't come up using the search function.
This is when I contacted support, well the turnaround time for a response is 48 hours which I find unacceptable since our own Tech support department doesn't do that. Well over several emails that had the strong impression they were following a script that was made from keywords. Well I made the mistake of mentioning that I had itunes installed. Well that is all they needed. Symantecs reponse to me now is to install some gear security drivers. I asked what these drivers are for and was told that third party apps use them to access the cd/dvd drives. The strange thing is I use my cd/dvd drives everyday for viewing and burning of both formats and no problems. I've also never had a problem using itunes. Well its to the point now that they won't move the support any further unless I install these drivers. Its strange that backup software would have conflicts with applications that aren't running, with devices connected to the usb ports and need drivers to access drives it shouldn't be during a backup. One of supports first suggustions to me as to why I can't complete a custom backup job is my harddrive must be below 1mb of free space. Hmmm its says I have 50gb free.
I haven't used any Symantec products in a long time because I got very tired of working around their conflicts but wanted some backup software and boy was it a mistake. I will never ever use another Symantec product again.
This is when I contacted support, well the turnaround time for a response is 48 hours which I find unacceptable since our own Tech support department doesn't do that. Well over several emails that had the strong impression they were following a script that was made from keywords. Well I made the mistake of mentioning that I had itunes installed. Well that is all they needed. Symantecs reponse to me now is to install some gear security drivers. I asked what these drivers are for and was told that third party apps use them to access the cd/dvd drives. The strange thing is I use my cd/dvd drives everyday for viewing and burning of both formats and no problems. I've also never had a problem using itunes. Well its to the point now that they won't move the support any further unless I install these drivers. Its strange that backup software would have conflicts with applications that aren't running, with devices connected to the usb ports and need drivers to access drives it shouldn't be during a backup. One of supports first suggustions to me as to why I can't complete a custom backup job is my harddrive must be below 1mb of free space. Hmmm its says I have 50gb free.
I haven't used any Symantec products in a long time because I got very tired of working around their conflicts but wanted some backup software and boy was it a mistake. I will never ever use another Symantec product again.
User Rating: 1/10
Symantec's worst software yet.
Pros: Easy install and uninstall. Chat support was quick and responsive but ultimately not helpful.
Cons: Slow, Many more
Review:
Compared to NGv10, NSR is about 10 steps back. Although the NSR's interface is similar, it does not have all the features of NG as you're led to believe. Because I needed the ablility to backup specific folders that NG does not do, I 'upgraded' to NSR. NSR runs very slow, 2 hours for a task that took NG 20 minutes. NSR's backup is also are at least twice as large as NG. On the initial and all subsquent attempts to do a backup, I recieved a persistant program error a couple of minutes at the start or the end of a backup and never was able to complete a back up task. The tech from Symantec's chat support was friendly but not helpful in that the two I spoke chatted with appeared not to be familiar with the error code given and bottom line remedy, as always, was to uninstall all of Symantec's products and do a complete reinstall.
I finally uninstalled NSR and reinstalled NGv10 again. Don't be misled into thinking that NSR is an upgrade to NGv10, it's a different program that still needs a lot of work.
I finally uninstalled NSR and reinstalled NGv10 again. Don't be misled into thinking that NSR is an upgrade to NGv10, it's a different program that still needs a lot of work.
User Rating: 1/10
deadlocks programs, and doesn't work
Pros: do not have to reboot to cause problems
Cons: hopeless product., I will be uninstalling...
Review:
Like most Symantec products, it is not compatible with older products. So I had to say goodbye to my 2004 version on Norton Ghost. Unfortunately, this product does not work as expected. First off, the full backup, does not backup partition information. So the special boot sector on my e-Machine needed for booting the OEM windows version is not backed up by Norton Save and Restore. Next off, because this product runs while Windows is still running deadlocks are the norm. Most of the time my backups freeze at 94%. Attempt to write or update a file while the backup is in progress may also freeze that program. I have had Firefox, IE, and Install Shields all freeze because a backup is in progress. I have not even found a clean way to reboot once these deadlocks occur, since even killing the process trees has no effect. Finially, forget about using the event triggers for autobackups. (This is enabled by default.) For example, I tried coping a DVD and the event trigger started an automatic backup while the DVD copy was in progress. Ultimately, this deadlocked Nero.
User Rating: 2/10
This product does NOTwork safely or reliably
Pros: Easy to save backups to DVD
Cons: Cannot restore from DVD
Review:
The backup process is easy enough and will even write directly to DVDs (which appears to be a good thing).
Save & Restore is designed to work in a "Recovery Environment" where in a disastrous loss of your Windows C: drive (so that you cannot boot to Windows) you can boot directly from the product CD (but this takes simply ages!).
Supposedly you can then recover your Windows system from earlier CD/DVD backups.
Problems comes though when you select the _same_ CD drive that you booted from as being the source of the backup the product fails with an
?Error E0BB0085: Mount point '' is invalid?.
This is catastrophic - product is not fit for purpose.
I was 'rather disappointed' to find that Symantec technical support actually said (and I quote from their ?chat? log) where they told me:
Tech Support>
Reboot to Windows mode and copy the image to hard drive and then try to restore the image.
Customer>
But if I had lost my hard drive, how can I do that? I need to be able to recover from CD please
Tech Support>
As you have single DVD drive, i suggest you to copy the image which is on CD to a hard drive and then boot in to recovery mode and then restore the image.
I could not make this up!
The product has very limited value in an emergency situation and technical support are ?not very helpful?.
I gave up on Save & Restore (and gave up on tech support) after 4 days of wasted time. I ultimately had to re-build my system from XP Distribution CD upwards and restore my user data from Microsoft Backups (which thankfully I had also done).
I took Save & Restore back to my retailer, I explained the situation and what tech support had told me and my retailer gave me a full refund.
N.B.: You have a 60 day money back guarantee from Symantec, use it (or better still don?t buy it ? stick with Ghost 7.5 which is less fancy but it works!
Save & Restore is designed to work in a "Recovery Environment" where in a disastrous loss of your Windows C: drive (so that you cannot boot to Windows) you can boot directly from the product CD (but this takes simply ages!).
Supposedly you can then recover your Windows system from earlier CD/DVD backups.
Problems comes though when you select the _same_ CD drive that you booted from as being the source of the backup the product fails with an
?Error E0BB0085: Mount point '' is invalid?.
This is catastrophic - product is not fit for purpose.
I was 'rather disappointed' to find that Symantec technical support actually said (and I quote from their ?chat? log) where they told me:
Tech Support>
Reboot to Windows mode and copy the image to hard drive and then try to restore the image.
Customer>
But if I had lost my hard drive, how can I do that? I need to be able to recover from CD please
Tech Support>
As you have single DVD drive, i suggest you to copy the image which is on CD to a hard drive and then boot in to recovery mode and then restore the image.
I could not make this up!
The product has very limited value in an emergency situation and technical support are ?not very helpful?.
I gave up on Save & Restore (and gave up on tech support) after 4 days of wasted time. I ultimately had to re-build my system from XP Distribution CD upwards and restore my user data from Microsoft Backups (which thankfully I had also done).
I took Save & Restore back to my retailer, I explained the situation and what tech support had told me and my retailer gave me a full refund.
N.B.: You have a 60 day money back guarantee from Symantec, use it (or better still don?t buy it ? stick with Ghost 7.5 which is less fancy but it works!
User Rating: 1/10
Didn't work, do not buy
Pros: Norton Brand, integrated live update
Cons: Lack of technical support
Review:
Installed Save & Restore and it integrates with the existing Norton Antivirus already on my system. Performed a "file and folder" backup using default options and Norton claimed success. I tried to restore a file from the backup as suggested by the user guide. Restore program window freezes with the process using 99% of CPU. This program simply does not work for file and folder backup.
Contacted Norton live support who suggested having only Micorosoft services and Symantec services are loaded at startup. Tried this and it did not help. Tech support was unable to diagnose something which is fundamentally wrong with the restore software.
Contacted Norton live support who suggested having only Micorosoft services and Symantec services are loaded at startup. Tried this and it did not help. Tech support was unable to diagnose something which is fundamentally wrong with the restore software.
User Rating: 
7/10
Actually does work
Pros: Works when you use it properly
Cons: Minimal documentation and support
Review:
The first time I tried to back-up my hard drive with Save & Restore, it didn't work. Then I defragmented the hard drive (which was not very fragmented) and tried again. Save and Restore worked perfectly.
