GoBack


Norton GoBack is a disk utility for Microsoft Windows that can record up to 8 GB of disk changes. When the filesystem is idle for a few seconds, it marks these as "safe points". The product allows the disk drive to be restored to any point within the available history. It also allows older versions of files to be restored, and previous versions of the whole disk to be browsed. Depending on disk activity, the typical history might cover a few hours to a few days.

Operation

GoBack replaces the master boot record, and also replaces the partition table with a single partition. This allows a hard drive to be changed back, even in the event that the operating system is unable to boot, while also protecting the filesystem from alteration so that the revert information remains correct.
GoBack is compatible with hardware RAID drives.

Incompatible products

Due to the changes made to the partition table, this can cause problems when dual booting other operating systems on the same hard disk. It is possible to retain dual-boot compatibility, but can involve saving the partition table before enabling GoBack, and after enabling GoBack, re-writing the partition table back to the disk.
It may also be necessary to disable GoBack prior to using certain low level disk utilities, such as formatting software. Such low level utilities which do not first check for the presence of GoBack can cause data to become corrupted. Another example of an incompatible program is the Windows version of True Image For Windows. GoBack is also incompatible with products such as Drive Vaccine PC Restore and RollBack Rx - as these products require access to the master boot record.

Usage precaution