Norton 360 v2 Backup files too big

I let N360 v2 backup my 186GB HD to a 500GB external drive. The backup folder on the external drive reports 256GB and 222 thousand files. I only have 193 thousand files total on the C: drive which includes thousands that I don't backup.

 

When I look at what is available to restore, i find 55 thousand files for 72GB.

 

Why is the backup folder so huge compared to what is available?

Paginated,

 

It is possible you have more than one backup set on that location. Can you find out how big the N360_ BACKUP directory is on the location you are backing up to. 

 

Thanks,

Mike

I let N360 v2 backup my 186GB HD to a 500GB external drive. The backup folder on the external drive reports 256GB and 222 thousand files. I only have 193 thousand files total on the C: drive which includes thousands that I don't backup.

 

When I look at what is available to restore, i find 55 thousand files for 72GB.

 

Why is the backup folder so huge compared to what is available?

The "Properties" dialogue for the N360_BACKUP folder on the external drive reports a total of 256GB in 221,917 files.

 

They appear to be all N360 backup files; I don't add anything to that folder.

 

I don't do any manual backups letting N360 handle them automatically so unless N360 is making new backups next to each other I don't know how that would happen. 

 

I also wondered if the backup contained multiple old copies of the same file or multiple versions of changed files. If that were the case you would think I would have a choice of "versions" to restore, or which backup set to use, but I don't. 

 

And the N360_BACKUP folder seems to grow with each additional backup. I will have to monitor its growth.

 

Paginated,

 

It sounds like you are suffering from a problem where multiple backup sets are being backed up. It is possible during an upgrade or a re-istall this was caused. We do not support versioning. To find out if you have multiple backup sets can you go one level deeper and tell me how many directories are located inside the N360_BACKUP directory? They will look like {2AE49F14-AF82-4447-98FE-9D0117F868B0}. 

 

If you have more than 1 of them but only a single backup set configured that is the problem. We have multiple solutions to this issue so let me know what you find. 

 

Thanks,

Mike

There was only 1 folder under N360_BACKUP with a name like that. Inside of that folder were folders {0 through {f.

 

I said "was" because I decided to update to V3. So I deleted the backup folder, downloaded and installed N360v3. That wasn't too bad but now the backup doesn't work at all.

 

It seems to go along fine but then crashes and reboots the computer. The Event Viewer shows a 1000007e error code. The only thing that looked close to the cause was the USB drive exceeded the bandwidth. That never happened before.The N360_BACKUP directory is there with the subfolders and files but N360 won't recognize that a Backup exists; says it never happened. I was there. It happened.

 

It is all too much trouble.