Norton backup problems
Customer had been using Norton Backup to backup her laptop to an external USB hard drive.
In theory, a very sensible idea, except for the norton part…
She needed to send the laptop for a warranty repair, and the shop had “forgotten” to remove the hard drive…
In the meantime, she had gotten a replacement laptop, and needed to recover her accounting data from the external hard drive…
It turns out that she assumed that Norton would backup everything… but wasn’t familiar using Norton to restore the data.
This is where I have a few issues with “commercial” backup programs (this is not just limited to norton).
The first issue is that backup programs will generate a backup file with all the backup data within the file. This forces you to use the original program to restore the data. I can understand the historical origins of this form of backup.
This is OK for a large company, but is utter crap for non-technical users. Take a look at syncback to see an example of great backup software. You can take a syncback backup to virtually any PC, and copy back any files you want, without needing to use any special software (just your standard windows explorer).
The second issue with Norton backup, is the default settings. By default, it appears that only “important” files are backed up… ie most of my documents, plus a few other selective windows files. Since MYOB stores its data (and its own backup data) in non-standard places on the drive, then Norton did not backup any MYOB data… Given the size of external drives nowadays, Norton probably should default to backing up everything, and prompt the user, if there isn’t enough space.
Needless to say, There was no data for me to restore (except for a few photos).
Now the customer hopes that the repair shop doesn’t wipe her hard drive… But from past experience, repair shops are notoriously careless with customer data… usually because the work is sub-contracted to the lowest bidder…
Oh well, fingers crossed.
Depending on the level of user experience and importance of data, I have introduced some residential customers to Microsoft’s SyncToy. It does a pretty good job of synchronizing pre-defined folders.
I’ve not heard of syncback. I will have to play around with that a bit. …I’ve gotta have something EASY to use.
My major peeve is still ANY email program and the storage of their data files.
When I get a PC into the shop that shows any sign that it will need an eventual wipe/reload, the first thing I do is get a full snapshot of the hard drive. I will then try to retain the data for a number of weeks after the repair is complete.
As residential computers start to contain more and more important data, I would like to see an application — similar to an Acronis or Ghost that mirrors the hard drive on an ONGOING basis. Not something that runs on a daily schedule, I would like to see an application that copies those new pics/ songs/ mail data in the background right after the users application lets go of the file.
Hi Pedro,
Syncback is not that easy to use (but its very powerful), but once its setup (by me), the customer never needs to touch it.
I had one issue recently, where the backup HDD was removed… and syncback was set to backup every 4 hours… everytime the customer inserted their usb flash drive, syncback would try to backup the HDD to the 4Gb flash drive!
You seem to work a lot like I do.
Yep, email programs are a pain. But recently, I’ve been moving a lot of my operation online (gmail (imap), google calendar, google contacts, etc)… it seems to work remarkably well, particularly with the recent smart phones.
So I think the residential situation will become easier (and less profitable for guys like us).
I gave up on Norton eons ago.