Norton Save & Restore review

DisK imaging programs take a snapshot of your hard disk, including your programs and Windows folders, files and settings.

Then, if your installation of Windows becomes corrupted - for instance, because of a virus - you can use this snapshot to restore either your entire hard disk or specific files and folders. Anyone familiar with Symantec's long-established program Norton Ghost will know just how useful disk imaging can be in a PC emergency.

Norton's Save & Restore is basically an update to Ghost, although Symantec appears to be selling it alongside the similarly priced Ghost 10. Given that it's an update, we expected to see some new features. We were, however, in for a shock - there are few major differences between this and Ghost 10. The install routine for both programs is identical, as is the interface once everything is installed. Save & Restore can backup your entire hard disk or simply those things that have changed since your last backup. You can boot your PC from its installation disc and use utilities on the disc to access your backup image, and to restore your hard disk. The utility on the recovery disc recognises and can browse lots of different types of backup devices, including USB hard disks, Serial ATA hard drives and so on.

The new features in Save & Restore are useful, but not enough to justify marketing this as a separate product. You can now mark certain types of files - for instance, video or photo files - for scheduled backup, which is useful if you want to ensure that your digital memories are safe. You can choose to backup specific files and folders rather than an entire hard disk. Ghost can restore specific folders from a disc image but you can only perform general backups of everything on your hard disk.

If you have Norton AntiVirus, you can also configure Save & Restore to do a backup every time Symantec sends out a virus alert, which sounds like more trouble than it's worth. If you don't have a backup program buy this, but if you have Ghost 10, don't bother.