Norton 360 All-In-One - false security!

I have used Norton Antivirus as virus protection since mid 90's and I have been satisfied with this application. The last couple of years I have used Backup Plus as a backup program and even though it demanded some attention, I regarded this as a workable solution and I took a backup every second evening to make sure that I was protected.

When it was time to renew my Norton Antivirus subscription I was offered the new Norton 360 All-In-One solution including backup functionality. I thought that it was a smart idea to have all security in one program and Norton 360 came with good reviews. So I bought the Norton 360 and the program handles all backup and it separates all files into different groups and it all looks very good and trustworthy.

Last Friday I found that all Personal folders in Outlook disappeared and I was chocked. I have more than 2.9GB of data saved in those files and it includes everything from our condominium association, my consultant company, PC information like passwords and login information to my website, Internet supplier etc to all conversation with all WothRline visitors.
I got a cold lump in my stomach!

Then I realised that I have Norton 360 installed now and I opened the program and started the restore file function. I found the file that was missing on the hard drive and it was backup on my USB hard drive in the N360 backup folder.
A bit happier I ticked the box for the Outlook.pst file and chose Restore file.
To my horror Norton 360 came back with a fault message, "Can not read the safety copy".
I tried several times and the response was the same, "Can not read the safety copy".

I first used the Norton Chat online support and after 20-25min I was connected to Christian and he was allowed direct access to my computer. He tried to solve the problem, but when he could help me, he just wrote; "I can't do anything more. Maybe the file is not possible to backup". "But it's there in the backup and you can see it as well as I can", I wrote. Soon there after I could read, Christian have left the chat.

I then called the Norton Support and spoke to a second person. He directly stated that this problem was outside his area of competence and he gave my an ID tag and a new phone number to Norton specialist department. With the ID tag I got an answer very quickly and Joni was very nice and helpful, but he came out empty after trying all the things that I have done prior the support contact. He was gone for a couple of minutes when he spoke to more skilled and experienced colleagues. The answer was that he or Norton couldn't do anything more for me. He recommended me to contact a local computer store and ask for help to recover lost data...

I had a hard time accepting this response and I did some more tries today, but nothing that I've tried solve the problem. So I phoned Norton Support once again using my ID-tag and had a new long talk to Joni. He had another talk to his colleagues, but they can't help me and they can't even help me decrypt the Outlook.pst from the N360 Backup folder, so that I can have this file sent for recovery. I'm just left without help and 2.9GB of data is lost!
The recommendation that I got was that Norton 360 is not the best solution for backup, I should have chosen the Norton Ghost - Now they tell me and what's the use with Norton 360 if it's not reliable?

Later this afternoon I contacted several PC recovery companies and they thought they could help me restore my computer and the lost Outlook.pst file. Cost for the recovery is minimum 2500sek and it goes up to 9000sek, and that's without any reassurance that they can solve the problem...
Right now it looks as if I have to send my hard drive from my laptop to Stockholm and spend minimum 2500sek plus shipping and I have no guarantee that I will get the Outlook.pst back!

If you're about to get yourself a backup tool, don't buy Norton 360!
Use Backup Plus or similar and chose yourself what files to backup and make sure to backup into different files, so that you don't overwrite to one single file each time.

2009-12-15; Today I got the verdict! The computer company managed to locate and restore parts of my Outlook.pst file. According to them Norton360 had collected all PST-files into one and damaged that file and in the process deleted it from the harddrive. I hoped that the most important maps and mails were saved, but I'm sorry to find that the most important is lost.
The cost for this operation is 5000sek(465€/682USD)!!!

I will uninstall Norton 360 as soon as possible and look at McFee or AVG.