Back up Nortons Utility ?

JerometheGiraff · 24 Oct 2010

After recently having a high risk virus, I was thought that by buying Norton 360 would remove the virus, the good news was that it found the virus the bad news is it couldn't remove it. I was left to reinstall windows after a back up from Paragon Back up and Recovery (Free Edition) didn't work. Norton comes with a back up tool are there any reviews on Norton's back up utility ?

I would also like to mention that I was previously using Windows 7 x32 which was installed on my O: partition. Reinstalling Windows 7 x64 on the O: partition, windows renamed the partition to C: and I lost files I had on my C partition is it possible to get at least some of it back ?

zigzag3143 · 24 Oct 2010

JerometheGiraff said:

After recently having a high risk virus, I was thought that by buying Norton 360 would remove the virus, the good news was that it found the virus the bad news is it couldn't remove it. I was left to reinstall windows after a back up from Paragon Back up and Recovery (Free Edition) didn't work. Norton comes with a back up tool are there any reviews on Norton's back up utility ?

I would also like to mention that I was previously using Windows 7 x32 which was installed on my O: partition. Reinstalling Windows 7 x64 on the O: partition, windows renamed the partition to C: and I lost files I had on my C partition is it possible to get at least some of it back ?

When you re-installed win 32 on O:\ did you format the partition?

karlsnooks · 24 Oct 2010

JerometheGiraff said:

After recently having a high risk virus, I was thought that by buying Norton 360 would remove the virus, the good news was that it found the virus the bad news is it couldn't remove it. I was left to reinstall windows after a back up from Paragon Back up and Recovery (Free Edition) didn't work. Norton comes with a back up tool are there any reviews on Norton's back up utility ?

I would also like to mention that I was previously using Windows 7 x32 which was installed on my O: partition. Reinstalling Windows 7 x64 on the O: partition, windows renamed the partition to C: and I lost files I had on my C partition is it possible to get at least some of it back ?

In direct answer to your question: I recommend using Win 7 Backup and Restore which is part of Win 7.

Now to your virus problem:

If that computer has a working OS, then download, install and run MalwareBytes.
Malwarebytes

If not, then there are two products which I can recommend. Each of these can be burned to a CD (or put on a USB stick with a little more work).

You will end up with a .iso file which you must burn to a cd. If you have a working Win 7 system, then that's easy. Just click on the iso and the Win 7 burner will pop up and tell you to insert a cd/dvd.

I have tried both of these. I have the greater confidence in the Kaspersky product. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my test computer did not have any viruses but both have very good user interfaces.

Kaspersky Rescue Disk (free)
Panda SafeCD (free)

Maxxwire · 25 Oct 2010

JerometheGiraff- You might have some success retrieving some of your data from the reformatted drive, but a substantial part of it has already been overwritten with Win 7 x64. There are a lot of backup programs on the market. FWIW I have used Macrium Reflect to back up both of my Vista x86 and Win 7 x64 computers and it has never failed once to restore a perfectly working image to the drive.

~Maxx~
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JerometheGiraff · 25 Oct 2010

FWIW I have used Macrium Reflect to back up both of my Vista x86 and Win 7 x64 computers and it has never failed once to restore a perfectly working image to the drive.

Will using Macrium Reflect be successful at retrieving some of the files that were over written upon installing Windows x64 on the same partition that was Windows x32 ? How does it compare with tools like Norton Back up there are quite a few back up utilities out there I'm just trying to find the one that is the most reliable and that is good whether that be something I currently have or another tool.

karlsnooks · 25 Oct 2010

Jerome,
I am not a user of Macrium but several are. I will leave that question for them.

Norton products don't seem to have made the jump to Win 7 smoothly.

I use only the tools that come with Win 7 including Win 7 Backup & Restore.

I will tell you that your chances of recoverying, at this stage of the game, from reformatting and installing on a partition are slim to none. I have used recovery software, a commercial product, to recover from a format but that was immediately thereafter with no install or usage in between.

Maxxwire · 25 Oct 2010

karlsnooks said:

Jerome, I will tell you that your chances of recoverying, at this stage of the game, from reformatting and installing on a partition are slim to none. I have used recovery software, a commercial product, to recover from a format but that was immediately thereafter with no install or usage in between.

No backup imaging software will be able to un-delete your lost files and I'm afraid that karlsnooks is right that the chances are slim to none at getting them back even with data retrieval software at this point.

In the past I have lost large chunks of data myself and learned the hard way that the old saying is true...

"If you only have your data backed up twice you don't really care about it..."

I now have Karen's Replicator freeware programmed to back up my data to 4 different drives.

~Maxx~
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JerometheGiraff · 26 Oct 2010

I will take a look at the two programs suggested. I didn't loose a ton of data a small chunk of what I lost has been recovered but there was other stuff including notes and design stuff I lost. Hopefully I can remember over time and rebuild some stuff I lost as well. I won't make the same mistake next time, I lost more data in previous formats/re-install then this time so that was the only blessing :)

Maxxwire · 26 Oct 2010

JerometheGiraff said:

I won't make the same mistake next time.

That is the same motivation that I have been running under in building up my file backup system. Unless you have a large drive in your computer that you can use you will need an external drive to back up to and I have run the gamut as far as the 1-2 TB Western Digital and Seagate drives available at local brick and mortar stores in that 4 out of 5 of them that usually only run in 480 Mbps USB 2 and have all failed within 6-18 months!

After spending well over $500 on a series of failed external HDD's I did some serious research and came across the LaCie Hard Disk MAX 2TB Quadra eSATA/FireWire800/FireWire400/USB 2.0 RAID Portable External Hard Drive that uses a 3 Gbps eSATA connection which I have measured at 160/90 read and write times in Raid 0 and when the two 1 TB drives are run in Raid 1 they are mirrored images of each other and if 1 should fail it can be replaced and re-imaged from the other for added security.

The LaCie 2 TB drive does cost a little more than the others did, but from the reviews I've seen there are people who have been using this drive for over 4 years with no performance issues. This LaCie HDD also has a fan which comes on during heavy use which I think has a lot to do with enabling its longevity and is almost silent when the drive is at idle.

~Maxx~
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JerometheGiraff · 26 Oct 2010

Thanks Maxxwire, I will keep that drive in mind for the future :) For now it's Macrium all the way and never let that happen again, what about the case with multiple computers backing them all up at once but separately can it be done with software and hardware if so what are the routes for both ?