Other Norton Products

[dtuuri]

Two weeks ago I had tech support uninstall Norton 360 and the tool also removed my Norton Ghost 15! Not happy about needing to contact support in the first place (the self-help uninstall steps seem to direct you to renew pages if you try to uninstall 360), but really ticked it wiped out Ghost too.

My problem is now defining the backup jobs in the new installation the same way I had them before (I can't remember any special file types I had). I want the same files backed up again in my daily document backup. Is there any way to look at the backup destination files to see what the incremental backup file types were? I have them on my external drive, but don't want to accidentally overwrite the two-week old data onto my current files.

[redk9258]

Do yourself a favor and don't use File and Folder Backup. Use Ghost for what it is really intended for.. partition imaging.

http://community.norton.com/t5/Other-Norton-Products/Ghost-Image-Backup-vs-File-and-Folder-Backup/m-...

[dtuuri]

When I backup the whole C: drive it takes a loooong time. Don't want to go through that every day, so I do an incremental 'documents' backup instead. Maybe I'm not using correct terminology? It's a default. Are you saying do the long one every day instead?

[redk9258]

I run a base backup monthly with daily incrementals. My base backup takes around 40-45 minutes. Incrementals take around 2 minutes. Incrementals take as long as a full backup if Ghost has to reconcile the backup. This happens when you have a 'dirty' shutdown or OS crash for example.

[dtuuri]

Thank you for that. When you say 'incrementals' I take it's the same thing I've been doing: What Ghost calls 'My Documents Backup'. But when I check the properties for that job, it says the 'type' of backup is 'Files and Folders'. You say 'incremental'.

I get quite confused about this stuff. Is your 'incremental' a 'files and folder' and the same as a 'My Documents Backup'?

[redk9258]

I use only Backup My Computer. It creates v2i and iv2i files. I do not use Backup selected files and folders that creates fbf files. When setting up a backup job, use Backup My Computer > select the drive(s) > check Recovery Point Set. This is what gives incremental backups.

[dtuuri]

Ah! That put my wheels back on track. Thanks. Knowing why the backup takes so long occasionally might give me a little more patience when it does too. I'll try just the "My Computer Backup" every day for awhile and see how it goes.

[dtuuri]

Well, it took an hour and a quarter... so far. At 94% with the green progress strip almost all the way to the right, I took my eyes off the screen to make some notes. When I looked back, the green was gone, the strip was empty, above the strip it says "Ready", but no "Success!" message. The external stopped flashing... oh wait, it started again while typing this post. Guess it's still crunching away after all. Coming up on an hour and a half. Ghost could do a whole lot better keeping me informed of whether it's working or asleep or otherwise not broken.

[dtuuri]

Been another hour, almost 2.5 now. Occasionally, the external drive flashes, but has been quiet for awhile. Still no green in the blank progress bar. The Ghost icon in the tray has a red x, still, "At Risk". Yawn. I wish I knew if it was alive or dead.

[dtuuri]

Ok, three hours. That does it! Still no green on the progress bar. Still have an "At Risk" red x on the task bar.

So, I opened Ghost and checked the status. It says Backed up with a green check. Which do I believe?

EDIT: Never mind. I see the D: drive with HP's system restore files was the "At Risk", but I don't backup that drive since I have CDs.