Overview

Rebit is backup and recovery software for backing up your Windows PC to an external hard drive. With Rebit software installed on an external backup drive it saves everything automatically including all your data files, photos, music, movies, email, Windows operating system, software applications, drivers, passwords, bookmarks, preferences and everything you need for fast, full system recovery. Recovering files and folders is a simple drag and drop process with the Rebit Explorer. If you need to do a full system recovery, it’s easy to restore your system back to the exact state is was before the disaster occurred.

Installation

Make sure you have the drive you want to use connected to your PC and kick off the installation wizard.

Next you want to choose which drive you want to install Rebit on. Rebit needs an entire hard drive free to turn it into a backup appliance.

If you select a drive that already has data on it, Rebit will transfer that data onto another drive with enough free space for you.

Click Finish to use Rebit on this PC or take it to another computer and use it there.

Features

If you’re using an external drive that already has data on it, Rebit will move it to another location so you can use that drive as the backup appliance.

Hover the mouse pointer over the icon and Rebit lets you know what it is doing in the notification area.

Easy to install updates as needed.

If you need to do a full recovery, you will need the Rebit disc to boot from or they have the recovery CD image available on their site for download.

You can remove the drive if you want as well by Right-clicking the Rebit icon and choosing Safely Remove. Here you can also access other features such as updates and Properties.

Ease of Use

Using Rebit is a very easy process and makes backups as simple as making sure the external drive is turned on. Setup is is done virtually automatically with very little work on your part.

If you just need to replace a file or directory, you can double click on the My Rebit desktop icon and browse to the location of what you need to replace throw a simple drag and drop.

To restore your PC you will need to boot from the Rebit Recovery disk they provide on the website.

You will get a warning message informing that all data will be lost, which is just a precaution, agree to it to continue the restoration.

Then just continue through the wizard to restore the PC back to the way it was before the crash occurred. The restoration can take a few hours (amount of time varies between machines) while the drive is rebuilt, but when it’s complete you will have your computer back.

Performance

Rebit begins by making a one-time catalog of your PC’s entire disk drive. This process can take several hours, so be patient and let it run to completion. While the process takes place you can continue to use the computer as you normally would. I found some lag in some programs during the cataloging but it was nothing intolerable. While it is building of the backup drive is taking place you will see four processes running in Task Manager.

In our test we restored a Windows 7 32-bit machine with 30GB of data on the drive including the OS and it took about 30 minutes to complete and everything was exactly how we had it configured before. From desktop icons, to documents, drivers, bookmarks…the entire machine was back.

Product Support

They offer great support options for their products including FAQ, user forums, downloadable manuals, and an included help file. You can submit a help ticket via email through their website and they also offer phone support during business hours (8am to 5pm) Pacific time.

Conclusion

Using Rebit to backup your computer is simple and effective. It’s really a “set it and forget it” utility and all you need to do is press the power button on the external drive to make sure everything is backed up. Here we looked at their software for making your own backup drive, but they also offer their own drives pre-configured as a backup appliance. You don’t need to worry about having disks, software keys, passwords etc when restoring from a hard drive or Windows failure. Prices vary when purchasing one of their drives, and the software is $49.95 but you can find it much cheaper on sites like Newegg and Amazon and they offer a 30 day trial. It works with 32-bit versions of XP SP2, Vista, and we ran our tests on Windows 7. If you’re looking for what can be considered the easiest full system backup and restore utility, check out Rebit.

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Rating

• Installation: 8
• Ease of Use: 8
• Features: 8
• Performance: 8
• Product Support: 8