Norton 360v3.8 "Can not read backup" - Please Help

Norton Security | Norton Internet Security
1

My Mother's computer died and I had to re-install Windows XP so of course needed to recover all her files from Norton 360. Everything has been working great pictures, music, internet favorites, etc...  until we came to "Office Documents" she doesn't have many but has 362 or so and only about 120 "restore". The other 240 or so give an error that says "Can not read backup."

 

I have been on the phone with Norton Support for about 4 hours as they took control and tried to restore these files then finally gave up with "The files are corrupted, sorry". No offense but why would only 13.3MB of over 19 GB be corrupted and why are they if all files are "Verified" at restore by clicking "verify files", LOL.

 

Anyway, the last Tech guy did move the ARestore and ARestore.Ioc files into the external hard drive directory and we attempted to restore that way. No luck, all it did was lock up the computer and basically shutdown Norton 360 until we rebooted. It would allow files that could be restored under the normal restore procedure to be restored, LOL.

 

Since being told I am SOL I have looked through the message boards and I moved my backup.@db file out of the directory and reran ARestore as suggested. What was weird is I lost almost 900 and some files and nearly 2 GB's from the backup file when I did that. Which is REALLY strange I think.

 

I REALLY need to get these files back especially the Family Tree Maker ones since my Mom is huge into genealogy. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance,

Chris

2

Hi CBarr_NC,

 

Welcome to the Norton Forum.

 

You wrote

 

"but why would only 13.3MB of over 19 GB be corrupted and why are they if all files are "Verified" at restore by clicking "verify files".....

 

First of all I do understand your frustration, due to these tiny things messing up everything for you.

I´m not an expert on the restore in N360, but I´ve got some experience regarding the situation  you`ve ended up in.

These tiny small things always create such situations you´ve discribed. That´s why it´s so frustrating.

I´ve learned long ago to 1st copy your data, after that you can start working.

What I learned was just, that you´re in a tricky situation if the data will vanish. It took me 4 weeks to make the

same data again. Vital data !! Lost that 4 weeks. Result: I always make a separate safety copy !!

This goes specificly for sensitive datas, that are always very important.

In these cases ALWAYS make a separate copy, not a backup like the one you´ve done, on a removable media i.e.

external HD, CD/DVD etc.

Why ??

It´s not the 1st time things like your situation occur. You can´t put all eggs in 1 basket.

For safety reasons make a 2nd copy for very special datas.

Always ask the questions: Are these datas very important ? In case this backup does´nt function, what do I do?

 

Fortunatly there are experts, that can restore corrupted datas.

I sincerly hope one of these experts will read your post.

3

Kurt,

 

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I agree that it is nice to have a second copy of data BUT what isn't to say the DVD gets damaged or corrupted, a jump drive is lost or damaged? How often should you do this weekly, monthly bi-monthly? How many DVD's do you want ot keep as "copies"? When you have 20 GB or more this could be quite an expensive process.

 

This is simply a software issue that needs to be resolved by Norton. They had/have an online storage restore issue so we went to an external hard drive and now it seems there are numerous problems with it as well. Hopefully someone will respond to this email before I get the obligatory "Engineering has looked at this and determined it is a problem with your computer not Norton 360 tomorrow at my scheduled callback time." That is a pretty common occurence.

 

Like the 8504,4 error and Norton not loading. I got tired of re-installing Norton 360 every week or so on that computer so simply stopped using it. Norton still hasn't fixed that one or contacted me about it even though I spent DAYS with customer service and gave them control a dozen times to try and fix it.

 

Or the "double files" problem they have, it has been documented for at least 2 revisions and still isn't corrected. I mean how hard is it when you Managed Backup Set says 4,000 files BUT when you look at the restore set from the external hard drive it says 8,000 files. If you look under the different file types everything is doubled. Why? This should be an easy fix. The Managed Backup Set is correct so why isn't the actual set itself correct? Programming issue.

 

Hopefully someone will actually find a fix for this and the other Norton360 issues.

 

Thanks again,

Chris

4

Hi CBarr_NC,

 

You´re asking how often to do a safety copy.

One example from my experience.

 

I was instructed by a security company to make a backup copy of an e-mail verification key

some 8 to 10 years ago and made it on an 3.5 inch floppy disc.

The instructions also told me to keep it in a safe and dry place.

I found this floppy with the label still on a year ago and fortunatly I´d an usb-floppy-drive to

check the content of the disc.

The content was still in good conditions and I checked and verified the functionality of it.

You need to have your very special file-backups in safe and dry places, futhermore you need to keep

them away from non-autherized persons.

Simply minimize the risks of these medias to be deleted or stolen in one way or another.

It´s not how often you do this, it´s the the way you keep your data over time.

You also have to consider to change the type of media used to a more up-to-date one i.e.

the 3.5 floppy you won´t find today at all as a good example. CD/DVD will certainly be out-dated

and need to be changed as backup media.

The way you structure and systemize your very important datas is your own knowledge as well.

Do it your own way by utilizing the data-storage technology most common today and change it well in 

time before it´s not used anymore in the future.

Todays computing is complicated, but when structured in your own way it can be handled more

easy.

 

Take care and good luck !!