Easy Backup and Recovery

The Rebit (Rebit, Inc., www.rebit.com) appliance and Rebit backup and recovery software make backing up your PC, files and folders no-brainer easy. Likewise recovery.

Just plug the Rebit into a USB port, click OK when your computer recognizes the device, enter your license key (just to make it legal), and the Rebit immediately begins backing up your computer. Backup includes everything: the operating system, system settings, applications and settings, data files and folders, e-mail, bookmarks, multimedia files and folders. The initial backup will take several hours, during which time you can continue using your computer, although there will be some slowdown in its performance.

Once the initial backup is completed Rebit stays active making backups of every new file that is saved. If you’re working on documents, making changes and re-saving as you go along, Rebit will keep backups of the previous versions. This feature alone can save the day if you accidently delete a document or project you’re working on. You can recover the last saved version or even previous versions by dragging and dropping the file from Rebit into your folder or even opening the file directly from Rebit.

Rebit automatically makes daily backups of system settings to ensure that these are up to date as well. If you have to leave your Rebit behind when traveling with your laptop, when you return and plug in your Rebit, it automatically makes backups of any files or folders that have changed since it was last plugged in. Rebit only backs up your computer’s internal hard drive(s). It will not back up external hard drives nor does it interfere with their function in any way.

A cool feature of the Rebit is that it monitors its own capacity and will never "fill up" as long as the total capacity of the appliance is the same or larger than that of your PC’s hard drive. It does this by automatically deleting the older versions of backed up information, making room for the newest versions.

There are Multi-PC versions of both the Rebit backup appliance and the backup software; these versions allow you to use one appliance to backup up to six PCs, although not simultaneously. If you already have an external hard drive, you can use that with Rebit backup and recovery software, giving you complete functionality and saving you some money.

You can always tell what the backup status of your computer is simply by hovering over the Rebit icon, which will then give you info as to the time of the last file backup. In addition, by hovering over a file name in My Computer, My Documents and the like, you’ll find two lines added to the usual file properties balloon: one indicating the number of versions of that file that have been backed up on Rebit and the date and time of the last backup.

Disaster recovery is likewise easy, given a caveat. For example, if your computer suffers a hard drive crash, just install a new hard drive in your computer and boot the computer with the included Rebit Recovery CD. You can select the point in time you want to restore from – usually the most recent – and it will be restored exactly as it was at that point. The restoration will take several hours. The caveat: if your PC is destroyed or stolen you can only do a complete restore if your new computer is the same make and model as the old one. The recovered system files and settings may not run properly on a new, dissimilar PC. You can, however, recover any files and folders to the new PC. You could also use the Rebit to transfer files and folders to any PC.

It is also possible to replace your current hard drive with a drive of larger capacity, but, another caveat: the restored system, files and settings will only image a partition of the same size as the original hard drive. The additional space will not be available unless you use a disk partitioning utility (third party or as included with Vista) to extend the system partition into the additional space.

Our own experience with the Rebit was very positive. The appliance installed quickly and easily. The initial backup took about five hours. As a test, we created a new folder and saved a small test file to it. We then edited the file and re-saved it. Next we deleted the folder and its file. When we checked Rebit, the new folder and the original and edited versions of our test file were there waiting to be recovered. The Rebit is definitely a must-have for easy, ease of mind backup and recovery. However we did notice a modest slow-down in performance in our computer as a price to pay for this ease of mind.

Rebit appliance is available in portable versions of 160GB, $149.95; 320GB, $169.95; 320GB Multi-PC $219.95, all including a carrying case. The desktop versions include 500GB, $189.98; 500GB Multi-PC, $239.95; 1TB, $269.95; 1TB Multi-PC, $319.95. The software only for use with your own external hard drive is $49.95 or Multi-PC version $79.95.