Comments on: Rebit 1 TB Multi-PC Backup USB Hard Drive Review

By: Allen Rogers

Allen Rogers — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:12:31 +0000

I am running Vista Home with Rebit on a laptop and it appears to have backed up everything except the Picture folder, Download folder, etc. The programs are there. I found this out trying to transfer some pictures. I don’t if this is a bug or not?

By: Mike Goldsmith

Mike Goldsmith — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:52:42 +0000

What is really needed and what I am currently looking for is a usb connected drive that does a complete incremental or scheduled backup every 1-3 dAYS, and when and if your internal HDD fails you should be able to remove the failed HDD from your computer and simply replace it with the HDD from the backup device…is there such a device (serial ATA)?

Mike

By: Ray Stone

Ray Stone — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:12:40 +0000

This is all new to me. When you transfer everything to the Rebit backup (ie: My Documents) does that mean that they are now ALL on the back up and no longer on your hard drive, or are they on both your original hard drive location AND on the back up ?? In other words would I have to cut and paste anything I want to edit from the back up to the hard drive ?

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:20:39 +0000

My testing was done using XP but I now have it hooked to my brand new desktop which is running Vista. Guess I will need to keep my eyes open to see if it stops working.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:58:21 +0000

Andy,
You can access versions of file. If you need to do a complete system restoration, you can even select a point in time restore point from the backup.

By: Chris Smith

Chris Smith — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:54:49 +0000

Did you test this under Vista? All of your screenshots seem to be from XP.

The simplicity of this device is likely short-lived – it looks like this product depends upon the AutoRun functionality that has been disabled by Microsoft in Win7 and will be disabled in Vista/XP via an update/SP soon due to USB Flash disks increasingly becoming vectors for viruses (http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/27/improvements-to-autoplay.aspx).

Once that change is rolled out, this product isn’t going to work directly as advertised – users will have to manually start the application EXE, which is likely to make it more difficult to use than other products that use a one-time installation approach.

By: Andy Van Pelt

Andy Van Pelt — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:12:10 +0000

Do you only have access to the latest version of a file, or can you gain access to older versions too? I’m thinking of a Time-Machine-like access.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:02:21 +0000

Hai,
Unfortunately, I did not test the complete restore feature as part of this review.

By: Hai Vu

Hai Vu — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:59:53 +0000

Ryan,
Have you tried booting from the CD and perform a complete restore? I have been working on computer for more than 20 years and have not found a complete restore solution that works.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:21:47 +0000

I also use Acronis (v10) and find it does a great job. I back up to a WD Passport drive. Easy restore of individual files. Also allows full system recovery, if you want to do that. I occasionally do a full system backup, but mainly use a script to backup specific data.

That said, the Rebit does seem an attractive option. I would like to know how dependable it is, though, in the event of a PC system failure. Also, I’d like to option (perhaps an “advanced user” feature) to exclude certain folders from the backup, e.g. my VirtualBox system images, since these change frequently and are big (gigs) and would trigger the Rebit’s background backup process.

By: Robert Larson

Robert Larson — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:22:45 +0000

I use Acronis True Image application and store its output to a ‘MyBook’ 1TB hard drive. Total cost to get set up is less than $150. One of the Acronis features is ’script’ development so the process can be automated based upon ‘what to backup’, ‘where to back up to’ and ‘when to back up’.