I have a 1TB main drive with an external 1TB drive for use as a backup drive.
Things work wonderfully until the external drive fills up.
The problem is, I see NO way to configure the backup itself to prevent this from happening. No settings for how long to maintain or restrict the number/date of backups. Only settings I see are how to include/exclude folders.
Hope someone can help - the included help files were less than "helpful".
On the main page of CNSS, hover over backup and a drop downmenu will appear. Click on Manage Back Up Sets. On the new screen you will see Help and Support in the upper right hand corner, click on it and then click on Help from the drop down.
You'll get a full page of help. In the lower portion there is a section entitled Things You Can Do There is an entry that talks about deleting backup sets. So it does permit you to delete your older backupsets.
Also in the same area under Create New Back Up Sets, it states 10 is the maximum number of backup sets you can have, so it should give some indicaton that you are exceeding the max of 10.
I am in awe that you have filled a 1TB external drive, without exceeding the 10 sets. FWIW, I just checked my XP system (6,749 files and 2.5 GB), but admittedly, I do not have many songs or videos saved on that system, although I do have lots of photos which very little space compared to videos.
You can also open Windows explorer while your external drive is plugged in, right click on the drive, and then select properties and it should tell you how much you have used and how much you have left.
Not sure this will help, but it should be a starting point.
I have a 1TB main drive with an external 1TB drive for use as a backup drive.
Things work wonderfully until the external drive fills up.
The problem is, I see NO way to configure the backup itself to prevent this from happening. No settings for how long to maintain or restrict the number/date of backups. Only settings I see are how to include/exclude folders.
Hope someone can help - the included help files were less than "helpful".
The problem is there is only ONE "Backup Set" named "DefaultSet", so I can't really delete that.
Somehow that "set" is just growing and growing, not iterating or making a "snapshot" of a day or a backup. If it is supposed to FINISH that set... and then iterate to make up to 10... that would make sense. What isn't making sense is that it is NOT iterating, but continually ADDING to the DefaultSet until the drive fills. It may even be backing EVERYTHING up over and over each time it tries.
Guess I will delete the DefaultSet and create a new one... see if that works.
From the Manage Backup Sets page, you'll see Things you can do on the right side of the page. There are options there to Create New Back Up Set, Delete this backup Set, etc.
I do not use this function as I have other backup options availabe on my system, but it appears, that if you create a new backup set, it would appear in the Backup Set Name drop down on that page, you could select it and then complete the rest of the steps (When/Where) for that backup set.
I'll see if I can get someone more familiar with this to help you.
Hello mark_leslie
Welcome to the Norton Community Forum
Comcast Norton Security Suite has a different backup program than N360 has. So yank who also uses Comcast will have to find out about this problem from the Comcast Forum I assume.
floplot wrote:Hello mark_leslie
Welcome to the Norton Community Forum
Comcast Norton Security Suite has a different backup program than N360 has. So yank who also uses Comcast will have to find out about this problem from the Comcast Forum I assume.
Hi floplot,
I can not find out from the Comcast forums, as there have been very few questions in regards to the backup functions, thus no knowledge base built by experts or users. we've been relying on Norton for support in that area.
I also am not so sure that the backup function is different from 360 when using an external device for storage. I know there are differences in the online storage function, as Comcast Offers what is called Secure Backup and Share I am not sure you can get to that link without being signed-in to Comcast, but you can try it.
mark_leslie,
The following information is compliments of Phil_D who I asked for some assistance and very graciously helped me out!
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I had Comcast NSS installed for two days and based upon my observations, the local backup to an external drive is incremental. It does not create a full set each time, but only adds new or changed files. So the backup size only increased in small amounts. I want to get a confirmation of my findings from someone at Symantec.
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So in your case, the one default file set appears to be correct (as you never set up any other set) and I was wrong in that it created a separate set for each backup. That said, filling your 1TB external drive surely does not sound to me like it is doing incremental backups as Phil_D observed.
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I am anxious to see what Symantec says about it, so plese do not give up hope yet.
One possibility here is that Windows itself is filling the backup drive. I had set Windows 7 Backup and Restore feature to use my external 1TB drive on a laptop with a 141GB used of it's internal drive, and had CNSS warn me today that it cannot run a backup due to lack of space. As the original poster appears to have experienced, my reaction was um WTF? I looked around on the drive and saw there was only 20-something MB available, and all the folders appeared to be things I would have associated with Norton only. Only by trying to open a folder that has the name of my computer did I determine that it was managed by Windows. 
I had forgotten about even setting up the Windows backup a few months back, when I first got the external drive, and apparently windows likes to save periodic system images which are of course huge.
So, I removed some older backup sets to free up some space, and then turned Win7 backup to "manual", and Norton appears to be happy now 