Rebit 320GB review

The Rebit is a storage device that comes with backup software built in.

You just plug it into one of your PC's USB ports. The software, which is stored on a hidden partition on the USB hard disk, starts up and asks your permission to run. Once it's installed, the software makes a backup of your entire C: drive - this takes a while, so you may have to leave the PC overnight. After that, each time you make a change to your PC, the Rebit software updates the backup. Whenever a file is changed, a new version of its backup is created.

When you need to restore a file, perhaps because you've accidentally deleted it or saved a bad version over it, simply double-clicking on that file will show you all the different versions of it that Rebit has backed up. You can then choose which version to restore. To restore your entire drive if something more serious goes awry, you have to use the Rebsit Recovery CD. After you insert this and restart, your PC will boot into the recovery program (a customised Linux boot disc). This leads you through a simple recovery wizard.

In theory, this sounds fantastic. There's nothing to learn, no software to configure; you just plug the drive in and off it goes. In practice, it works almost as well as it should, but not quite. The first time we plugged it in, the software didn't auto-run. At the second try, the software installed but no Rebit icon appeared in the Windows taskbar, making it difficult to figure out if our PC was protected or not. We took a chance, left it running and in the morning were happy to find a complete backup of the C: drive on the Rebit.

From then on, everything was plain sailing. We recovered individual files and the entire hard disk, and both options worked fine - though the full restore took two hours, longer than Ghost or Acronis TrueImage recovery software.

If you value simplicity over versatility, this is a good product. It costs only a little more than a plain external drive, and it's worth the extra.