As for the comment about Rebit being a fly by night company and probably not around, I doubt Seagate would have sourced their software if they thought Rebit wasn’t going to be around. And if push comes to shove, someone like Seagate could just buy them

I occasinally notice the Seagate Replica (with the Rebit software) updating the backup, but not that often. If I know I am going to be doing some intense work that I don’t want the backup software to interfere with, all I have to do safely disconnect it. Done – that stops the backups but leaves the drive physically connected to the USB. The next time I reboot or wake from sleep it will automatically re-attach (that’s a Windows USB thing, nothing special to Rebit) and my backups resume.

Unlike Windows Home Server that backs up one a day, I like having the continuous snapshots of my data. Since Rebit appears to utilized Microsof’ts Windows Volume Snapshot Service (VSS) the incremental backups are tiny. I have a years worth of constant snapshots of my files – and it has been *extremly* handy to go back and pick a prvious version of a file before I relized I did something that I needed to get back. If I had been doing traditional daily backups I would not have had the capability to do that.

If you have more than one comptuer to back up, Windows Home Server is a no-brainer. You can get the HP Media Smart boxes on sale for under $400 on a routine basis, and the next version of WHS will allow you to do more frequent snapshot backups for people like me who want and need that level of protection. Windows Home Server also does data de-duplication the first time a file from one of your computers gets backed up, if a second has it the second computers backup just references the file that is already there. That can translate into huge savings when you have multiple computers with the same program files, operating system files, media files, etc.

However, if you have one or two computers to protect, Rebit works as advertised and it’s very cost effective. I use it for my work laptop since my company doesn’t have a formal backup plan for desktops (or laptops) and I’m hardly in the offfice to use the file server.

And yes, have restored. Individual files are as easy as going into Windows Explorer and dragging them out to where you want them. I had an extra laptop hard drive so I swapped it into my laptop removing my system disk, booted off of the provided CD and restored – and it worked flawlessly. The only complaint I have with Rebit is as others pointed out, it will occasionally slow the system – but like I said I just do a safe disconnect and then re-enable it later if it gets to be too bothersome. It does seem to have much less of an impact over time – I hardly ever notice mine now, but for the first few weeks I agree it can be aggrevating. It’s probably the products only real weakness and I don’t know if there is much they can do to fix it with backup being so disk IO intensive and hard drives being, by far, the slowest thing in modern computers. For the protection it provides, I’ll happily be inconvenienced a little now and then. If you ever loose important data from a lack of a backup, you’ll be willing to be a little inconvenienced too! Unfortuantly most people havn’t had the “pleasure” of data loss, and the “Oh, that can’t happen to me” or “I’ll do a backup tomorrow” rationalization is a strong one. You don’t learn about the fallicy of those until it’s too late That’s why something like this is so perfect (and why Apple built it into Mac OS X in the form of Time Machine).

They have a NAS version – I may have to try that out so that when I am on my laptop wirelessly (which is most of the time) my machine will still back up. I use Time Machine on my Mac laptops wirelessly and I love it since I never have to think about backing my laptops up.

Finally, I never understand the comments about wanting to also be able to use it as a storage drive. It’s an integrated backup solution. Disk is cheap. Just dedicate an external hard drive to the thing and move on! Sheesh… As for all the other comments about other backup solutions from Ghost to whatever – none of them are as hands off and automated as Rebit. And if it’s not easy guess what – human nature will take over and before you know it you won’t be backing up. That’s the biggest value of solutions like Rebit and Windows Home Server – you don’t have to do anything and they just work!

Just like the best camera is the one you have with you, the best backup is the one you actually have

My first phone call to support had me talking to someone that sent me a software upgrade. That didn’t handle the problem however. Subsequent emails would take days before I got an answer and the fixes suggested didn’t help.

Then I got an email requesting a phone call so the Customer Support Manager could remotely access my computer to figure out what the problem was. That sounded good but he didn’t keep the appointment. We rescheduled for a week later and he didn’t keep that appointment either.

I emailed one more time, asking if someone else in the Support dept. could help me but got no reply.

Needless to say, I won’t be using Rebit and will recommend that others stay away from it.

David
Savannah

My hd in my HP is starting to make noises, knowing from past exp. it will not be long before it crashes.

David
Savannah

Thanks for the comprehensive review of our product. We agree with you – for those users wanting an easy to use, yet fully-protective, backup solution, Rebit is the best solution.

A couple of points you’ve made aren’t technically accurate, so I hope you don’t mind if I state the company position on them:

1. “The only small gripe I could have is that it only backs up your main drive, and no others in your system”

Actually, if you right click on the the task bar icon, you’ll see the menu option More>Select Drives to Backup. This will allow you to include/exclude other internal/external drives you have on the machine.

2. “Since the rebit acts also like a restore disc it’s very nice, but if your operating system gets all messed up, then it’s kind of pointless to restore it back to that isn’t it? I mean what’s the point of restoring a bad operating system to only be greeted with the same problems again? ”

Actually, Rebit will create new restore points frequently, and should you need to restore to a point earlier than when you first notice a problem, that’s easy to do.

3. “Ok, so I’ve got another gripe about this software, you can’t actually access what’s on the disc without rebit.”

The disk is loaded wiht a guest client which allows one to browse and retrieve files from it to any other compatible computer (Windows based). It’s perfectly suited for migrating files to another machine.

Thanks again for your great write -up – if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our great customer service team at support@rebit.com

Kind Regards,

Norton Ewart
Product Line Manager
Rebit, Inc.

I am a big fan of Apple’s Time Machine and this is the closest Windows product I have seen…