Product Reviews

Keeping a backup copy of important files is essential; you never know when your hard disk might fail. Symantec's Ghost is an established solution, but aimed at experienced users. Save & Restore 2.0 is supposedly easier for the less technical user to get to grips with.

In practice, differences between the two programs are minimal. Ghost has some advanced functions, like the ability to restore over a network. Save & Restore holds your hand a bit more, with step-by-step wizards to guide you through its main functions. It also allows you to schedule the regular backup of certain types of files, such as digital images. Version 2.0 adds only a few new features. Its setup routine has

ADVERTISEMENT

been simplified, and provides more information; backups are (allegedly) faster, and the program now installs under Windows Vista.

Save & Restore is well designed and its core functions can't be faulted. You can create an image of your entire hard disk, and once that's done the software can keep that image up to date by regularly backing up any changes you make. Even more importantly, restoring your system is simple too, whether you're copying back your entire hard disk or browsing your backup image for specific files to retrieve.

However, we weren't all that impressed with Symantec's improvements. While Vista support is welcome if you need it, the backup process didn't feel any faster. It took well over two hours to back up a modest 40GB C: drive, and that was over a fast internal SATA hard disk connection, rather than the slower but more likely USB.

Thanks to Amazon's heavy discount (around half the official price), Save & Restore 2.0 is good value. It's easy to use and does all the basic things you need to do to protect your data. It doesn't beat our previous Best Buy, Acronis True Image, which is the same price on Amazon, because Acronis is slicker and offers some features that Save & Restore doesn't - but both programs do their job well.