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Norton Ghost users - Welcome to Symantec System Recovery!

Andreas_Horlach
Level 6
Employee Accredited

As announced today (15 March 2013), Norton Ghost 15 is being discontinued, and will be replaced with Symantec System Recovery (SSR) 2013 Desktop edition. Click here for details. We'd like to welcome those customer who already have made the transition, or are thinking about it! Please use this thread to discuss any non-technical issues, such as functionality, upgrade information, etc. If you encounter a technical issue and require technical epertise, you are in good hands. This board is monitored by several SSR specialists, ready to assist. Simply start your own thread with your question. 

On the surface, Ghost 15 and SSR 2013 are very similar in the look and feel. The console hasn't changed much, so using the product itself should not be much of a learning curve. However, the engine itself has gone through several improvements. Here are a few of the changes in SSR 2013 from Ghost 15:       

  • Support for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8
  • UEFI Support: Symantec System Recovery now enables boot from UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) in addition to BIOS.
  • 64 bit Support:  32-bit and 64-bit recovery disks are now included. 
  • USB Recovery Disk: Create a custom Symantec System Recovery Disk on a USB device. Add 32- or 64-bit drivers.
  • Advanced Monitoring and Reporting: Symantec System Recovery Monitor is a new monitoring solution that's extremely simple to use and is FREE of charge to all Symantec System Recovery 2013 customers. It's a standalone and lightweight solution for managing up to 100 nodes. It’s simplicity and no extra dependency eliminates the learning curve for users. Intuitive GUI along with essential action controls provide crisp status along with ability to take desired actions seamlessly through the same view.
  • Improved support for virtual environments: Greater support for ESX, VMWare, HyperV, and Citrix.
  • Smart Reconciliation:  Now Backups and reconciliation are efficiently done by smartly tracking changed blocks. The reconcile time is drastically reduced to seconds by eliminating the need to do a complete reconcile in cases of crashes or abrupt shutdowns. In addition,  incremental backups are now up to 750% faster. (Incremental Backup without reconcile at least 35%, Full Backup 15% faster, Incremental Backup with reconcile – At least 750% faster than Norton Ghost 15)
     

For more information on SSR 2013, visit http://www.symantecsystemrecovery.com.

Again, welcome Norton Ghost users! Please let us help make the transition to SSR 2013 as seamless as possible. 

97 REPLIES 97

Andreas_Horlach
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Mike - I would recommend first laying down the system reserved partition, then without rebooting, lay down the C:\ drive. The options should be automatic so you should not have to add\remove any check marks, except the option to Verify the image before restoring. Because you laid down the hard drive to a SSD drive, you may have to lay the system reserved partition down over the one you laid down previously (an odd behavior of WinPE) to allow it to boot. Don't worry about laying down the D:\ drive as that can be done in Windows.

If you get the error about going from BIOS to EFI, ensure that the original image was created in the same mode as restoring.

mwinnick
Level 3

When I look at the available Recovery Points all of them say BIOS is the column titled Image Firmware Type. Seems to me that's the problem. Shouldn't that column read either EFI, UEFI or GPT? If so, how do I set the backup parameters so it takes the backup image  right?

The SRP you refer to, if I remember right there were two items on the list to check to recover. I don't remember which was which but is it obvious which is the SRP?

When I look at the SSD through Disk Management ir shows the SSD has a 100MB partition as well as two others and it says it's healthy. I assume the MBR in front is still OK, that is the fact it con't boot to that drve doesn't say the MBR is bad?

Once I do recover the Hard drive to the SSD how do I then get it set to be the boot drive? Do I disconnect the HDD on the first reboot and reconnect it after?

mwinnick
Level 3

Andy,

I found another thread titled Backing up a UEFI Based System in which it showed the need to display hidden volumes and it showed that when you do that the type of partition/drive is displayed, such as EFI partition or reserved partition. But when I show hidden drives it does not display any description, but it does suggest that I include in the backup my A drive. But my A drive is my solid state and I am just backing up my hard drive. And just to be sure, if I look at disk Management, it does show both my hard and Solid drives have a healthy EFI partition along with two data partitions.

 

I am doing a backup right now including all the partitions, except the A drive. Can I restore it, to the A drive, the SSD,  without shutting down and using the recovery disk environment?

 

mwinnick
Level 3

Andy,

I just tried to recover my computer and received an error message which said: Cannot recover UEFI based recovery points on BIOS based computers. Please select a BIOS based recovery point. What is going on here?

I haven't even told it where to recover to. This sort of looks like I cannot use SSR on my PC since even if I wanted to recover to my hard drive I couldn't do it.

Mike

mwinnick
Level 3

Andy,

Forgot to add this. When I look at the recovery point it says Image Firmware Type BIOS. What is it talking about? If I have disks with EFI partitions where is it getting the BIOS type from?

Mike

Andreas_Horlach
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Go into the System's BIOS settings and see if EFI is enabled on your system. That is the only way we'll know if your system is set to EFI boot or not. photo4.JPG

mwinnick
Level 3

My BIOS is layed out differently but here's what it displays when I enter it:

UEFI Booth Sources

     Windows Boot Manager

     UEFI: Samsung SSD

     UEFI: Terabyte HDD

Legacy Boot Sources

     ATAPI CD/DVD Drive

          SATA2

     Hard Drive

          SATA0

          SATA3

          Seagate Expansion Disk

     Network Controller (Atheros Boot Agent)

 

My system is an HP H8-1360t and their site, and their chat boards all indicate the it supports UEFI.

 

 

Andreas_Horlach
Level 6
Employee Accredited

I think at this point, you may want to call Symantec and open a support case so the tech can walk you through this. The forums are taking up too much of your time, and I know you want to get this up and running asap. 

https://my.symantec.com/webapp/faces/technicalSupport?casetype=cc  

mwinnick
Level 3

Thanks. Will do that.

mwinnick
Level 3

Andy,

 

Talk about frustrated.

I went to that web site. Besides having to fill in a ton of informatiom it wanted to know what Product Version I had. I have no idea what version I have. I downloaded it from tnhe web. None of the emails I recievd from Symantec, which gave me my Support ID, Serial Number, Part #, another different Support ID and my Certtificate Number said anything about a Product Version. How do I find out what my Product Version is?

kims
Level 2

Hi

Used Ghost up to 15, and realized that it was announced EOL.

Downloaded SSR Desktop edition for a test run.

After instll, I try to create a custom recovery iso, but gets an Error message -

SSR-error.jpg

I can then continue, and create the iso image.

I burn the image to a cd, and try to boot.

At a point during boot, it reboots the target.

The target uses RocketRaid2310 card, which works well with Ghost 15 Custom Recovery CD.

Any ideas?

kims
Level 2

Sorry forgot - The target platform is Windows XP.

Andreas_Horlach
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Does that error occur only when attempting to create a custom recovery disk?

Also, have you tried to boot with the standard recovery disk to see if that card is seen? Many new drivers have been added to the SSR 2013 recovery disks. You should have downloaded 2 of them: a 32-bit and 64-bit.

mwinnick
Level 3

Andy,

First, the support guy I spoke with was good. Sounded like I was talking to India, just an observation, but he was good as was the webex connect.

But, what I just found out is that unlike Ghost, you cannot just do a backup and then go into the data to retrieve just one file. There are two backups you have to run. One backup creates an image that you then use the System Recovery Disk to restore with. That backup cannot be browsed.

The other backup is called a Files & Folders. On that one you specifiy which files and/or folders you want to back up and that one will allow you to retrive an individual file or folder. I started doing that but after specifying the folders I wanted covered (which included My Pictures which is a 29GB folder) it told me there were 55,000 items to back up. It took 15 minutes to back up 7,000 of them, and thus would take 2 hours for the whole deal.

That's insane when the whole system backup from my SSD to my USB3.0 only took 9 minutes.

That's a deal breaker for me. Am I misunderstanding anything?

Michael Winnick

Andreas_Horlach
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Hi Michael -

I wasn't on the call, so I cannot speak for what happened, but if you want to recovery a file or folder from a backup image:

  • Click Start > All Program > Symantec System Recovery > Recovery Point Browser.
  • Navigate to your backup destination folder
  • Select the recovery point file that you want to browse, and then click Open.
  • In the Recovery Point Browser, in the tree panel on the left, select a drive.
  • In the right content panel, right-click on a folder and\or file that you want to recovery.
  • Click Recover...
  • Select the location to recovery the data to.
Using this method you should be able to avoid using a File And Folder backup job.

mwinnick
Level 3

Andy,

That worked. But there's still a major problem that is going to lead me to ask for my money back. I'll be sending a note to the Support people that I worked with yesterday about it.

Basically after loading the Recover disk and booting to the recovery environment (which by the way takes at least a minute or two for it to get to) I followed all the instructions on how to locate the backup, select the partitions  and execute the restore process. Let me say that the process is time consuming because you have to restore each partition, the EFI and the actual data/OS partition, separately.

But, even before I got to do that, when I went to restore the first partition, I got a message telling me that I could not restore a UEFI recovery point to a BIOS computer. This is of course strange since it created that recovery point from that computer just minutes before.

At this point I am just disgusted with the product and the effort I have spent on it.

As a point of comparison, I did some searching and found a product by Macrium, in Britain, called Reflect. It was able to back up my drive in 8 minutes and, better, restore it, in about 20 minutes, without me having to restore individual partitions. It runs painlessly.

So, I need to find out now who to contact to get my money back.

I appreciate all your help but I cannot spend any more time on trying to figure out what's wrong and why, especially since another product, with good reviews, seems to have no problem.

 

Michael WInnick

kims
Level 2

Hi Andy

Yes, the error message only occur when attempting to create a custom recovery disk.

The Standard SSR2013 recovery disk boot's ok, but selecting to take a backup, the "timeglass"-circle keep on going. During that, only the help button is active, and I have to kill the PC power to get out of this state.

Best regards

Andreas_Horlach
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Just as an update, we identified the issue. Please refer to this technote: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH207176