Checking out Rebit SaveMe

One of my colleagues who works in Africa recently shared his findings with me about some really easy-to-use backup software called Rebit.  He said that it was very easy to install and fully automated, designed for full recovery of Windows XP / Vista / Win7 computers.  I decided to test out this software and figured I might as well share my installation experience with you as I set it up for the first time.

It is meant to be a stand-alone solution, not something you run over a network.  We need a solution like this for staff working in remote parts of the world.  It needs to be simple to install and require virtually no user intervention to keep running, and it needs to be fairly inexpensive for this specific need.  We have learned from experience that if the user has to do something to initiate a backup, it will never happen.

The user does need to have a spare hard disk to back up to, like an external USB hard drive.  They leave their external HD connected to their computer for most of the time and the backup occurs automatically in the background.  If the internal boot drive fails or data gets corrupted or deleted then to do a full restore the process is to insert the Rebit SaveMe CD and boot on it.  Then connect the external hard drive and the software will step the user through the restoration process.

I decided to purchase and test out SaveMe along with others who I work with at JAARS, to actually do a backup of a computer and then to test the restore process.  I'm daring (or maybe just ignorant) so I am using my production laptop that I use every day for work.  I'm not saying that I will trash and restore my work laptop - at least not yet!  But to get familiar with the installation and operations I put it on my real computer to see how it works in real life.

This software can be purchased in two flavors:

1. SaveMe software, currently priced at $39.99 which backs up a primary computer to the external HD plus up to 5 other computers.  They each back up by connecting the HD to each computer one at a time, not over a network.  This could be an inexpensive solution for small workgroups, although it would require enough human intervention to plug the HD into each computer to let the backup run.
2. SaveMe Express which is priced at $29.95 and designed to back up an individual computer.

You can also choose a software download option rather than buying the media at a $5 discount.  If you don't already own an external hard drive you can purchase one with the software preinstalled for an additional charge.  See the web site for up-to-date costs.

I purchased the SaveMe software (the 6 computer version) because we wanted to test this out with multiple computers.  I already have a 500 GB external USB HD, so following the instructions that came with the CD, I first connected my external HD before installing the software.  I'm running this on Windows 7, 32-bit by the way.

Installation
When I stuck the CD into the computer the Autorun program prompted me about installing Rebit SaveMe.
The installation program ran through its steps prompting me to click Next at the opening screen.
Then it asked to confirm which external disk drive I wanted to install the software on.  It installs on the external HD, not on your local boot drive - in fact C: is not even listed as an option.
I selected the drive to install it on, and when prompted I accepted the license agreement.
The program installed in about 15 seconds and then presented me with the Finish screen.
On that screen there is a single check-box option titled "Backup this computer to the Rebit SaveMe drive."  The box is checked by default so all I had to do was click Finish.

After that the program began to start backing up my laptop.
A window popped up automatically and then became minimized to the taskbar.
I had task manager running and for about 30 seconds the utilization on my laptop varied between 50% and 90% as the app created a system restore point.
Then a window popped up asking for the license key.  The key comes with the software package, so I entered that and clicked OK.
After this the program disappeared from the taskbar and a new icon showed up in the System Tray area.
The icon is the image of a green frog.

Operation and Performance
In the background the program (actually a service) backed up transparently, fluctuating between about 0 and 18% of system utilization (of course that will vary with other computers.)

Task manager showed that the application uses 5 processes:
      Process Name                            Owner          Memory Used

• rbvss.exe                                System           24,108 KB
• Rebit-SaveMe-Autoplay.exe  (me the user)     3,436 KB
• Rebit-SaveMe-Svc.exe          System              8,808 KB
• Rebit-SaveMe-SysMon.exe   System              2,168 KB
• Rebit-SaveMe-Tray.exe         (me the user)     3,168 KB

Rebit-SaveMe-Svc seems to be the one that generates most of the activity and CPU load during a backup.  The amount of RAM it uses grows slightly as it works through the backup and shrinks on completion.  The RAM used by other services grows as well, for example after the backup was done the Svc app shrunk to 6,804 KB and the Tray app increased to 9,876 KB.

When I hovered my mouse over the icon in the System Tray, a box pops up listing the status of the backup with the number of remaining files to backup being shown.  I was able to keep working, typing this blog and checking my Outlook e-mail just fine while the backup was running.  At a fairly low percentage of CPU it was not noticeable.  Maybe if I was doing other heavy disk operations I would have felt the load but my guess is that they run it with a fairly low priority since it's designed to run all the time in the background.

Right-clicking on the SaveMe icon gives options to Open the backed up information, Disconnect the external drive, About, and a More menu with options to Set a Password, Remove a PC, or Select the drive to backup.  Also a Properties option is listed and the option to Check for Updates.

Storage on the External Drive
Prior to installation, I wondered if this program would automatically wipe the existing data which was on my external hard drive.  The quick start instructions didn't mention anything about that.  I had a prior disk image on the drive which took up about 100 GB, leaving around 400 GB available for other data.  If it was wiped it was no big deal, but I left it there to see what would happen.  It turns out that the SaveMe software just installs on the hard drive in addition to what is already there, without deleting any of the existing data.

SaveMe uses free space on the external HD but when you look at the drive with Windows Explorer it does not show the data that gets backed up in any usable fashion.  The backup image shows up in Explorer as a virtual drive titled Rebit SaveMe.  If you click on that drive once the backup is complete then it shows the computer name that was backed up and within that you can drill down to the C: drive or the Desktop or Documents shortcuts.

My C: drive had about 57 Gig of space in use.  I would expect this to take a number of hours to backup.  After 1.5 hours it was about 1/3 backed up, but 4 hours later it was totally finished so I'm not sure exactly how long it took.  At first look I think that it is also doing some compression because it reports the final data is just using 48 Gig of space rather than the 57 Gig in use on the real C: drive.

Restoration and Recovery
I will document my findings on this once I test it out.