I have been running Norton Security Suite (NSS) on Win 7 for almost a year, after running a earlier version on Win XP for a number of years. I have had nothing but problems with backup on the Win 7 version. After spending about 4 hours digging through posts on this forum, I am beginning to see the problem. The problem is that there is no adequate introduction (documentation) on how this backup facility fits into the PC life cycle. Here is my version of such a statement, given in the hope that someone will make an effort to correct it and put it in a location where users will see it.
- NSS backup (also referred to as Norton 360 backup) is designed to backup user-created files, such as documents and photos. Configuring the WHAT as My Documents only and selecting various file types will do this. [though I have not tried that]. By "user generated" I am not including files that are created indirectly such as by Quicken or tax software, since these are frequently not in My Documents and/or do not have normal file type extensions.
- NSS backup can be configured to backup designated folders (including, conceptually, hidden files and folders). This requires NOT specifying file types and, instead, specifing a drive letter and using the include/exclude capability to specify specific folders. Once a folder has been specified, NSS will, by default, recurse within that folder [though there have been some complaints that this does not always work]. By not specifying file types, the software will pickup all the files in each folder and subfolder (unless specifically excluded). As far as I can tell, that will include any hidden files within that folder. The "make hidden files visible" setting in Windows Explorer may affect this; I have not experimented.
- If the NSS backup is set up to back up folders, it is best to exit all other programs so the backup can get access to any files that would otherwise be locked or unavailable to the NSS backup. However this is not fatal - the backup will just not get those files. [at least, I do not think it is fatal]
- NSS backup IS NOT designed to be an "image backup" that can be used to restore the registry and installed software after a hard disk crash. I am not saying that it would not help for that purpose (I suspect it would not); I am only saying that its purpose is to do incremental backups of user generated data files. If a user installs a new application, it will be much safer for that user to use some software (such as the Windows backup software) to make a snapshot of that image after the installation (and possibly before). That snapshot should not have to be updated as long as the the Norton incremental backup is being run on a regular basis to keep the "user generated" files intact.
- It is not clear to me what should be done with "application data", the various software settings and templates that users indirectly modify over time. I am also not clear about whether we should back up the various hidden folders in Win 7.
- Apparently NSS backup is not capable of waking up a Win 7 computer from sleep/hibernate to run its backup. Nor, apparently, will it force the Win 7 to hold off going to sleep while backup is running. Hence, if the user wants to take advantage of the automatic backup feature, it may be necessary to turn off the power-saving sleep feature of Windows. I hope that I am wrong about that, but that seems to be consistent with my experience.
I wish I had had a description similar to the above when I (involuntarily) switched from Win XP to Win7. I would now have some files that are forever lost.
Mike