Posts Tagged backup

Backing up your computer is something that most people think about but seldom do. Kind of like flossing your teeth or exercising more. It needs to be done, but it’s not an enjoyable task and it’s easy to put off. The products from Rebit take care of that by making it automatic.

Much of your data can be backed up “in the cloud” now anyway, so a hard drive crash isn’t what it used to be. But what about all those photos? What about all that music? Backing all those up online can get expensive since they are very big files. If you’re traveling for a long time or are an expat in a developing country, you also may not always have a fast Internet connection for all those gigabytes to flow through.

I used to use a basic portable hard drive from Western Digital until out of the blue it died while I was on a ship in the Galapagos. Apparently that’s common with these small portable drives, which makes me wonder, “Do I need a backup for my backup?” There I was with 400 new photos stored and praying that my laptop wouldn’t die or disappear. Their warranty on the old version I had was quite limited, but the company kindly offered to restore the data on it—for a mere $800. Um, no thanks. Now they come with a longer warranty though: three years. (See John’s Western Digital portable hard drives review.)

So now I use this Rebit, which is billed as “ridiculously simple backup.” The promise is that you plug this thing into a USB port (or two ports if extra juice is needed) and follow the installation wizard. After that it figures out what’s on your computer, and then it backs everything up. You don’t need to press any buttons or launch any software. It’s all automatic.

If you leave it plugged in it keeps backing up files as you work (and deleting what you delete), but if you only plug it in now and then, that’s fine too. The Rebit figures out what’s new since the last time and it goes and grabs it. In the event you need any files later, you just drag them off the Rebit and onto any computer.

The product has improved over time. I tried out a version a few years ago that was twice as thick and twice as buggy, failing to work properly on two different PCs with XP. This time I plugged it into my HP dv3 laptop with Vista and everything went without a hitch. The Rebit backed up 100 GB of data while I slept and then every time I plugged it in later (getting nagged every day I didn’t by the software), it would usually take 20-30 minutes to get updated. In theory it works in a way that doesn’t slow down your system—waiting until your mouse isn’t moving to work—but there was a little bit of system lag when the Rebit was plugged in, especially if I was typing. But this is true with most any backup system, so if it’s a concern you can plug it in when you’re going to lunch or something.

The device is sleek, light, and thin, with just a blue LED light to show it’s on and a place to plug in the USB. It comes with a cloth carrying case. This would be easy to pack up and take on the road for making sure you don’t lose any photos or files from your travels. It can also serve as a way to transfer said photos or files to a different computer. In my tests I was able to plug this into a home PC and drag over picture folders using the usual Windows Explorer drag and drop system.

Personally, I would prefer more feedback than what is provided. There’s nothing telling you what’s being backed up or scanned like you get with cloud solutions such as SugarSync. It doesn’t even really tell you when it’s working and when it’s not. Mousing over it or clicking on what’s in your system tray just brings up a message that it’s working.

The one real snag I ran into initially was this was supposed to be a two-computer version, but I could only get it to work on one. Since there’s no way to control the thing, there was nothing to try as a fix when it just installed itself and then did nothing more on the second computer. A call to tech support fixed the issue though when they walked me through a workaround—they do have a phone number answered by humans available during working hours. [Review updated 2/15/09]

Note that you can also buy Rebit just as a software solution (for less than $20 at Amazon) and install it on your own external hard drive. So if you’ve already got a regular hardware-only portable drive, you can put this software on it and then back up without thinking in the future. Just plug it in. It only works with Windows but that’s okay: with a Mac you can do the same thing with the included TimeMachine.

The prices on the actual drive are quite reasonable though—if you ignore the list price. The 160GB version goes for under $80 at Amazon and the 320GB version is under $110. Both ship for free.

See other reviews at Rebit.com.