Without a reliable backup system in place all the valuable and, in some cases, irreplaceable digital photos, music collections, and personal record stored on our computers could go up in smoke quicker than you can say ‘boot disk failure’.

Given that Windows’ own backup feature is a bit of a dead loss, investing in some kind of third party failsafe is not just sensible, it’s virtually mandatory.

Norton Save and Restore is based on 'disk imaging' technology. In fact it’s built around Symantec’s own Norton Ghost, but has been made a little friendlier to use and comes with an extended range of options.

Disk imaging creates a snapshot of the contents of a computer's hard disk at a particular point in time so that, in the event of things going awry, a PC can be restored to when things were ticking along nicely.

Save and Restore takes this one step further by integrating a file and folder-based backup system as well, allowing users to schedule regular backups of specific files in addition to incremental or full system backups.

This can be particularly useful if, say, you find you need to roll back your PC to a state it was in a week ago but don’t want to lose all the digital photos you’ve added to your PC since that point in time.

It also means that you don’t have to do a complete system backup every time you make changes to your documents.

The utility can backup and restore to a secondary hard disk. So, in the event of a complete hard disk failure, you can pop in a new disk and have your original system up and running in a flash.

Also included is Symantec Recovery Disk, a CD-based utility to help restore your PC when you can’t get Windows to start.

All in all, Save and Restore is a powerful ally that’s simple to set up thanks to its wizard-based approach.

Apart from its slightly high cost, our only gripe is that, at the time of writing, there is a distinct lack of online technical support available. Hopefully Symantec will remedy this soon.

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Rating: 5
Price: £20