Rebit 5 Backup Software Review

Back in March 2011 Rebit released version 5 of their PC backup software offering system protection and date recovery. Is the software as easy and hassle free as promised, Daniel Bell finds out…

Rebit 5 Backup Software: Features

Rebit automatically protects your digital content, every song you download, each picture you transfer or video you capture, it is immediately backed up. The software works whenever your computer is connected to the backup drive, wireless network or LAN and can backup to multiple drives, rotating them offsite for additional disaster protection. File versions are maintained so you can go back in time to any previous version. Backup to hard drives connected directly, by LAN or wirelessly. With Rebit 5 you can easily recover the entire system hard drive from any catastrophic event – hard drive crash, virus or corrupted software installation. You can check that status of any backups via the real-time at-a-glance display.

Key features:

• Fully automatic
• Drive rotation
• Continuous data protection
• Concurrent direct and network backup
• Full system restore
• Data Health Dashboard
• On-demand recovery point creation captures the state of the system now
• USB 3.0 support for fast data transfer

Rebit 5 Backup Software: Performance

After accepting the User Agreement during installation you are asked what type of backup drive you would like to add – local or network. The next screen informs you that the program is performing a full computer backup which may take several hours. This was quickly followed up with a screen asking to choose a backup location. In this case a NAS was chosen, which is a wired connection. Knowing this would be a long process the software was left to run overnight. The program was paused during backup at one point and upon restarting it, the backup started from 0% again! In the morning the message "Your computer is backed up" appeared on the Dashboard. From here you can browse the backup.

There are further options available when clicking the settings button. If you have any other hard drives you can also have these backed up as well. You can also add further backup locations and view any Recovery Points that have been created. There is also an option to create a recovery disk and set a password to protect your backups. Overall the program is laid out well and is really clear, with very few options and settings which can be changed.

Value for money

Rebit 5 can be puchased for £19.49. If you prefer a paid for software program to do your backing up there are many to chose from, such as Perfect Image 12 Backup & Protect Suite for £26.47 and Acronis True Image Home 2011:PC Backup and Recovery for £29.54. There are also a range of free opensource programs available on the web.

Rebit 5 Backup Software: Verdict

Creating a simple backup is easy to do as claimed and it is comforting to know your data is continuously being backed up without having to think about it although it isn't as clear how to perform some of the more advanced tasks such as drive rotation. It would have been good to be able to specify what was backed up, such as certain folders or file types (e.g. photos). Although the backup performed in this review took ages, it does depend on the speed of your connection to the backup device and the amount of data to be backed up.

Rebit 5 Backup Software: Pros

Easy to backup
Interface is very beginner friendly
Software is constantly backing up changes

Rebit 5 Backup Software: Cons

Free backup programs are available
Paused backups start from beginning

FEATURES
PERFORMANCE
VALUE FOR MONEY
VERDICT

Rebit 5 Backup Software: Specification

System Requirements	A customer-supplied USB hard drive or network attached storage (NAS) of equal or greater capacity than the internal system hard disk drives 32-bit Windows XP and XP Pro (Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3), 32-bit or 64-bit Windows Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate), and 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7 (All Editions) CD-ROM disk drive NTFS-formatted, non-RAID system disk drive Pentium 4+ or AMD Athlon+ processor and 2 GB of RAM Memory A NAS device or share with 2-3 times the capacity of the PC’s to be backed up.
Network Attached Storage (NAS) Requirements	Support for Windows workgroups. (Windows domain authentication not supported) Network configured for DHCP
Customer Support	90-days free phone support Extended phone support available for extra charge Unlimited email support