Hello all,

I have been a very happy Norton Ghost user for several years now. Something happened just recently that I have not been able to figure out.

So this Christmas I received an 8GB HP Flash Drive from a relative. For some reason, whenever this drive is plugged in to ANY usb port, Norton Ghost will not run, scheduled or non scheduled. I would get the message “Cannot Reconcile Since Last Backup” among others. For some reason, no matter what, if this HP Flash is connected, the Storage Management Console (?) cannot initiate, or in other words, Norton can’t successfully “scan disks.” I have a multitude of USB devices, and none of them, in any configuration will produce this problem. Just that one HP flash drive. But forget about that. Now that I know, it is no longer a problem.

Long story short; Before I figured out that this particular flash drive was causing all my problems, I uninstalled and reinstalled Ghost several times, including using Nortons own COMPLETE removal tool, in an attempt to rebuild my recovery strategy. Now that the culprit has been removed, everything works fine………. Except……..

I now get 4 incremental recovery points per partition, per scheduled occurence. For example, if my C: is scheduled for a single daily incremental backup at 2am, when I check it in the morning, I have 4 recovery points, ranging from 2:00am to 2:02am for creation time. All the backup files are numbered in sequential order, i.e. C:001, C:002, C:003 and C:004. The first recovery point is of expected size, but the following three recovery points are very small as if only backing up the incremental change since the last backup, which just took place a minute prior. All of my settings are correct i.e. I have not selected to create more than one backup per day. Also, where the scheduled tasks are listed, everything is correct as well, listing only my intended operations.

Here are some of my specs:

XP Home Pro, SP 3
Norton Ghost 10.0
250GB HD in 4 partitions (XP C:, Temp D:, Apps E:, Data F:)
Backing up to 400GB HD (T:)

Backup Strategy is as follows:
C:, incremental, daily at 2am, monthly begin new set
D:, incremental, daily at 3am, monthly begin new set
E:, incremental, daily at 4am, monthly begin new set
F:, incremental, daily at 5am, monthly begin new set

So, my theory is, during my multiple install/uninstall ventures, when I kept trying to recreate my backup strategy, this information is being saved *somewhere* (other than the normal, visible places in Ghost) and is being recalled and repeated every time I run my normal backups. Does anyone know where I can find this information and delete the multiple occurrences of the same jobs?

I appreciate any help,

Craig

Thanks Brian.

I'm not sure; Seems like this all might have taken place at the worst possible time, as my old backups auto-delete on the first day of every month, when a new recovery set is started. Without that, I am left with my offsite backup which has my sets from December 1st still stored.

I'd rather not go back a month if I don't have to. I'll have to confirm when I went through all this. It might have been on January 2nd, in which case I will be golden for a restore.

I'll have to confirm that when I get to my computer later today. I just wish that there was a registry entry or hidden file that I could modify or delete.

I'll let you know what I find tonight.

Yes I have. Seems like doing so adds to the problem. During my uninstalls and schedule deletions, something is being left behind somewhere, yet it keeps getting called up despite a fresh install.

Thanks Brian.

No, I bring home my offsite backup the 1st day of every month and refresh it with the latest recovery base set. Then I take it back to its offsite location the next day. I guess I really need a larger HDD so I can keep several months of backups on hand, both at home and offsite.

Yeah, couldn't have been worse timing. I have been home and verified that I was messing with all this just in time to get it all included in my fresh monthly recovery set.

I spent some time looking through hidden Norton files and scouring the internet, but no luck yet.

But, some good news I guess; I changed my backup times from 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am, to all times in the evening instead. I gave it a test run and it worked as hoped, just making a single backup point per partition. Maybe all I need is to flush the schedule with some fresh (different) times?

I guess later tonight will tell. We will see if it makes its own ghost sets at my previously set morning times. I will report back in about 10 hours. Then, if it succeeds, the ultimate test will be to change the scheduled times back to my normal routine and see if it works.

Thanks for hanging with me on this one Brian!
I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Craig

Just an update. Changing the schedule times from AM to PM and running the backup, then changing the times back to my original schedule solved the problem. Really strange, but happy it's all sorted out now. Thanks for the ideas Brian.

Craig