Bait and Switch Backups

JMLopez · ‎05-10-2009

Has Norton purposely written a buggy "Other FIle Types" option for the backup setting so that it saves everything it can instead of what you want in order to fill up your free backup space and force you to have to purchase more?

Here is the screenshot of my manager that I saved.

Notice that I only have the files under Thunderbird flagged for backup. I save the Settings and close the Backup Settings screen.

FIguring I'd only backup what I selected, I ran "Backup Now" which took a long long time to complete. When it finished, I opened the backup settings again, and selected the "Delete Previous..." link. Lo and behold, look what was backed up!!!

I then reopen the settings screen, click on Other File Types and this is what I see.

Can someone please tell me what the heck happened? Why did the app go ahead and backup directories and files that I did not specifically select? Do I have to go through explorer and manually mark each directory and file as "Exclude from backup" one by one?

Thanks for any help.

Jim

[edit: Cleaned up language content.]

Message Edited by shannons on 05-18-2009 12:29 PM

acc13 · ‎04-14-2009

JMLopez,

Seems obvious, but trying to eliminate possibilities:

When did you first configure your backup?

If, for example, you previously saved your Backup settings with the default settings; then a backup may have already run (the default is to incrementally backup your new/changed files every 4 hours when your computer is idle), at which point, all the default categories and files would have been backed up to your backup set.

This may be why - even after you later went back into the Backup Settings configuration UI and changed your settings to only include the Thunderbird appdata directory - you still see other files on your Backup destination.

These will remain on your backup destination until you explicitly delete them.

If this is not the case, this worked for me:

Starting from scratch - in the Backup Settings page, from a clean, new Backup set that has never been run,

Deselect all Categories (optional, but it sounds like you want nothing but your Thunderbird directory backed up)
Click "Add Folder", browse to your Thunderbird directory, and add it to your backup set

Subsequently performing a Backup should only back up the files located in your Thunderbird directory.

You can verify this from the Restore UI, or the "Delete previously backed up files" window. You can also verify this from the "Additions and Exclusions" window, which should only have one entry for your included "Thunderbird" directory.

As for intentional bugs to get our customers to buy more storage; this is anything but our intention.

Actually, our UI is designed to assist users to only select the files that they really need to backup.

Examples of this are:

Not all categories are selected by default
If you create a new backup set, the new backup set will have no categories selected
New backup sets will not select online as the backup destination by default, if you already have a backup set configured to your Secure Online Storage

Anyway, please let me know if this solves your problem.

If not, I'll have some questions for you.

Thanks.

JMLopez · ‎05-10-2009

These problems still occured even after I had my backup location deleted. I started from scratch.

I even opened My Computer, right clicked the Documents and Settings directory and selected the Exclude option.

When I opened backup settings the directories and clicked on the Pictures link, all the directories under Documents and Settings were displayed and files were selected. I then shut down Norton, went back to MyPictures, selected all the pictures, right clicked and selected the exclude option. Opened backup settings again and the files were still selected. So I unselected them them in that tree displa.

How is the exclude option supposed to work? Is it supposed to include/exclude all files in the directory and all subdirectories? In the backup settings trees, why do some directories have the half-slash in the check box even if all the files in the directory are unselected?

JMLopez · ‎05-10-2009

I just ran backup again and those empty directories were created again when I SPECIFICALLY unselected them in backup manager (no x in the checkbox). This is really aggrevating because I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.

Let me tell you what I want to do, and you can tell me how to do it. First, I will delete all backup files.

1. Pictures:

- I want to only save the pictures in five subdirectores

- I do not want to save any pictures in the Pictures directory nor in two other subdirectories.

2. Financial Files:

- I want to save my MS Money files under My Documents\Money

3. Email

- I want to save my Thunderbird files under C:\Documents and Settings\MyName\Application Data\Thunderbird

4. Documents

- There's only 5 or six Word files I want to save under My Documents and two subdirectories under My Documents.

How do I set this up so that only those files are backed up without all the empty directories or files from Application Data?

acc13 · ‎04-14-2009

Hi JMLopez,

Our backup UI combines both a category and file-location based approach.  These two paradigms are antagonistic: whenever a category based rule is created in opposition to a location based rule (ie. include this category, but exclude this folder; or exclude this category, but include this folder), then an ambiguity arises in the interpretation of the rules.
(In your case, selecting "Exclude" from the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer creates a location based rule, which is ambiguous when interpreted in the context of the default included Pictures category).

In these conflicting rule situations, the way we resolve the rules may not match the expectations of all users, since there is more than one way to interpret/resolve the conflict.  The result is that the behavior in some of the ambiguous situations is not always intuitive for all users.  However, the majority of our users do not make much use of exclusions, and the default settings plus a couple custom inclusions fit most needs.

In case you're interested, here’s a little background on the evolution of the Backup configuration UI:
In Norton 360 v1, the UI was originally designed to be category based only, since this does not require any understanding of file-system trees, etc., and is the most accessible to our basic users.
In Norton 360 v2, however, we added location based rule support as a result of feedback from our advanced users.  The resulting design is a compromise between the two.
In some cases (but not all) where an ambiguity occurs, we err on the side of including user files, to ensure that important customer data is preserved.

For now, however, the simplest way to make sure you are backing up the files you are interested in protecting is to avoid using a mixed approach.
Here is one possible way for you to back up the files you have indicated:

1.    Start over by deleting your existing backup set, and creating a new Backup set.
·         Note, these old backup sets can be most easily deleted from the Norton Drive, in the My Computer folder in Windows Explorer.  If you have a lot of files backed up, please be patient.
2.    Deselect all categories in your new backup set.
3.    Using "Add a Folder", include your:
·         5 "My Pictures" subdirectories
·         "My Documents\Money" directory
·         Thunderbird directory
·         2 "My Documents" subdirectories
4.    Using "Add a File", include your
·         6 MS Word files

Let me know if that works.

Thanks.

acc13 · ‎04-14-2009

Er, that was not what the Preview button showed me :smileysurprised: ...

JMLopez · ‎05-10-2009

Preview button? Sorry, I don't get the reference.

It sounds like my using both category and file based rules created a HAL-9000.

I'll give this a try this weekend and let you know how it goes. Thanks for taking the time to help me with this. I really appreciate it (it'll give me geek cred with my wife!)