I am a photographer and have about 3 TB of images (data) in about 800 folders in "My Pictures" in Windows 7. There are probably 200,000 files (images), and I edit them and move them around a lot. I backup to a 4GB Seagate external drive using USB 3.0. I have been a Norton 360 subscriber for many years and love the product (indispensable in fact), but was using Western Digital backup software because I could see the normal folder structure in the backup set on the external drive and I was comfortable in how it behaved and the routine it utilized. I could look into the backup set and see how it was behaving and see if it had missed a recent new or edited file (which it sometimes did) because it looked like the normal windows file structure. But I decided last week to delete that software from my system and instead try the Norton 360 backup. Why? because on the WD software I changed the name of a folder that had 600 GB of data in it. The backup routine kept the old folder and wrote a complete new folder with the new name, immediately filling the drive with useless and duplicated data that I did not need as a backup set. The only change I made was the folder name but here I was with an extra 600 GB of duplicated data sitting there on the drive when none of the actual files within the folder changed. It was keeping too much old data (old versions of edited image files) when really all I want is a mirror oh my pictures folder.
So here are my questions about Norton backup, because it is not apparent what is happening in the routine or how many old versions of files it keeps. I am not interested in keeping old versions - -only the latest edited file as it is on the C drive. WD allowed me to set how many versions. I wanted zero previous versions, but had to set it to 1 (goes up to 5). Can I change that on Norton? How many old file versions does it keep in the backup set? If I change the name of a folder, will it keep the entire old folder with the original name and write a complete new one, or will it just duplicate the name change on the backup set? Is there any way to view the folders on the external drive in the backup set and see what I have? It seems like the files and folders are all encrypted and what you see is nonsense -- no way to view the actual names of the folders and files and structure of the backup. I want to change a file and check it later and see if it backed up.
The backup icon does not display on my folders and files in Explorer, even though I have it set that way, so I don't know what is backed up. But what I really want to do is view the actual file in the backup -- see what is there. Is there any way to do that?
Please explain the details of how the backup works. How many versions of an old file does it keep for recovery (I want zero). On auto, when does it backup? Every time a file is changed? Once a day? When? Is there any way to view the folder and file structure in the backup?