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JUNE 17, 2008 Rebit 500 Drive
Included in the box From the Rebit web site: Their take on How it works In many circumstances this works fine. In my case, and maybe yours, it may not solve the problem. My Dell 8400 was 4 plus years old. The three year warranty I bought when I purchased it ran out long ago. I add and remove programs very often due to testing needs. For some time the Windows XP Media Center Operating system was having so many restart problems that I frequently had to perform a cold boot (Pull the AC plug and, after a minute, plug it in and press the ON button.) One CD/DVD drive locked up frequently. The computer only had 2 gigs of ram, and a 250 gig hard drive. To use the Rebit solution I would have to buy a new hard drive at about $125.00 from Dell. I could install it myself and run the recovery disk to restore the old operating system and files from the Rebit. Of course that would give me an operating system that was as corrupt as it was just prior to the computer failure. This would be a sure path to another crash. Does this sound like a geek trying to justify his purchase of a new computer? I think so! I decided to buy a new Dell. That decision gave me a new computer and a much lower bank balance. Unfortunately the Rebit backup at that point was of no value to me as I now had a different operating system. XP Pro with a larger 500 Gig hard drive. Luckily I had a Seagate FreeAgent 500 Gig external drive and, for the most part, had been backing up work files by hand from the old Dell to that drive for some time. I did lose about 2 months of emails in Outlook Express and some web work but most of my files were safe. What have I learned? Maintenance I would also recommend finding a drive and software combination that will backup a mirror image of your hard drive. (The My Book Studio II does not do that according to their tech support.) Make a backup of the computer as soon as you have it up and running or after you have installed the programs you use the most. Then keep that backup in a safe place. This will give you a clean copy of your system to use at any time. If you then also backup your files on another drive you will be ready for almost anything. Sorry that I deviated away from my original task of reviewing the Rebit 500 Gig Backup appliance. The Rebit is a good option for those who know little about computers as well as those who do. It should not be the only backup solution you rely on if you use your computer 8 or 10 hours a day. All during this depressing event the Rebit continued to backup every file I created. It worked in the background and never failed in its attempt to protect my computer. I, on the other hand, failed miserably.
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Plug it into a USB 2 port (the 500 Gig version requires an AC outlet as well) and, after some mouse clicks, just leave it alone. You work is done. The Rebit backs up your entire drive including your files, programs and operating system. If the drive fails, for what ever reason, you install a similar or larger sized replacement drive, pop the included recovery disk into a Disk drive, and let Rebit populate the new drive so it is exactly as your old drive was the moment prior to the crash. That is if the Rebit was plugged in and up to date just prior to the failure.