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criley's avatar
criley
Moderator
12 years ago

Useful information for Symantec System Recovery (SSR) customers

Many Symantec System Recovery (SSR) customers, and potential customers, ask the same questions over and over again on the forums. Nothing wrong with this of course but I thought I would put this information together to help answer at least some of the most common questions that I see on a day-to-day basis.

Here goes...

Product Information Pages:

Windows Server Edition: http://www.symantec.com/system-recovery-server-edition

Windows Desktop Edition: http://www.symantec.com/system-recovery-desktop-edition

Linux Edition: http://www.symantec.com/system-recovery-linux-edition

Links to download trialware:

Windows Server/Desktop Edition: https://www4.symantec.com/Vrt/offer?a_id=154587

Linux Edition: https://www4.symantec.com/Vrt/offer?a_id=154588

Support Landing Page: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=landing&key=53845

Symantec System Recovery 2013 Software Compatibility List (SCL): http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH201318

Symantec System Recovery 2011 Software Compatibility List (SCL): http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH157280

Symantec Management Platform (for customers using SSR-MS) Support Matrix: http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO9965

Link to Ideas section of Connect (a place to submit your enhancement requests):

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/backup-and-recovery/ideas

Link to Known Issues (product defects) section of Connect:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/backup-and-recovery/issues

How to contact customer care (for non-technical, i.e. licensing queries):

http://www.symantec.com/support/assistance_care.jsp

How to contact support:

http://www.symantec.com/support/contact_techsupp_static.jsp

Logs that support need to troubleshoot problems: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH54539

How to download/install the 2013 Management Solution (it's changed with the release of 2013):

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH201523

Documentation:

2013 User Guide: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC6256

2013 Management Solution Admin Guide: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC6257

2013 Linux Edition User Guide: http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC6258

Common Problems:

Why are my drives not listed as a drive to backup? This is one possible cause: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH143704

If there are other things you would like to see added to this list, just let me know.

I hope this helps to answer some of the questions that people are asking.

Thanks,

Chris

Backup and Recovery
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  • smartcoding's avatar
    smartcoding
    Level 2
    12 years ago

    I'm so confused with all those new products names.. I'm looking for modern alternative of an old good Ghost 8.2 standalone tool which I could run from my bootable USB disk and backup/restore just about anything I want without need to install Windows/Linux GUI program. Does it exist among today's Symantec products?

  • Andreas_Horlach's avatar
    Andreas_Horlach
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    Symantec System Recovery 2013 will work. This software creates a complete system image of your hard drive. In the event of a crash or other disaster, you can restore that image back to your hard drive. And yes, you can create a bootable USB drive to restore your images. You can also create images from the USB if you want to. 

  • smartcoding's avatar
    smartcoding
    Level 2
    12 years ago

    Hi Andy, thanks for reply. I've downloaded free 60-days trial but the most intuitively close tool I found there was "Creating custom Symantec System Recovery Disk" which required a recovery disk in the beginning. Download page didn't provide me with any disk besides the archive with installation distributive.. So I couldn't continue at that point. While documentation is very long, it didn't help me really.. Additionally, as far as I understand this feature creates bootable disk with one image that is created from the GUI (Windows/Linux). I need a standalone tool that I can copy to my already bootable USB drive (I don't want to format it again, just copy the tool to it without losing other data) and backup any other PC drives/partitions by booting up from that USB and running the tool. Think of backing up PC with only *BSD installed or any other OS that doesn't have native Symantec System Recovery GUI. All that was totally possible with Ghost 8.2 standalone program, is the described above possible with SSR2013?

     

    P.S. ..if the described above is possible in SSR2013, a guide or a tutorial would be really helpful as I find existing documentaion/knowledgebase very unhelpful so far..

  • jtburnett's avatar
    jtburnett
    Level 4
    12 years ago

    I know what you're talking about, I had Ghost 11. That Ghost SRD (recovery disk) works for me in the SSR2013, but I didn't try it before I installed the SSR2013 program onto my computer. I know you could create an image though through the SRD disk in Ghost without installing the full program on your machine- not sure about this one.

    I'm constantly told by tech support whenever I need a question answered, and I mention Ghost, that "this is not Ghost..this is System Recovery- do you want to talk to the Ghost people?" Maybe it's not Ghost 'under the hood, but the GUI and the define defination menus aren't similar, they're exact, right down to the advanced choices.

    Probably didn't help you, but my fingers got much needed exercise. 

  • jtburnett's avatar
    jtburnett
    Level 4
    12 years ago

    If I'm not supposed to post here in this thread- sorry in advance. 

  • criley's avatar
    criley
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    In order to boot from a USB drive and take a 'cold' (with OS shutdown) backup, you will need to burn the recovery disk on to your USB drive. In order to burn the recovery disk, you MUST install the SSR product - there is no other way of doing it that I'm aware of.

    Recovery disk AND full product can be downloaded via the trialware site:

    https://www4.symantec.com/Vrt/offer?a_id=154587

  • smartcoding's avatar
    smartcoding
    Level 2
    12 years ago

    Thanks guys, that's certainly enough of information for me to draw my own conclusions