Update on Rebit

Ok so two weeks have gone by since I have fooled around with Rebit.  I have not connected the external HD at all because I figured I have not done that much on my PC that needs backing up.  At work I am network connected and so most of the things I change are on a network drive or on a web server.

Anyway tonight I plugged in the HD and figured I would let it run for a bit to back up anything new.  I was surprised that I didn't seen any activity on my computer (the external drive has a little light but it's hard to tell if it's actually writing or just powered up and spinning.)  I looked for a Rebit icon in the system tray and didn't see one.  Not remembering all about my initial experience two weeks ago, it took me a few minutes to realize that Rebit was plugging away backing up my data.  It was totally transparent to me as the user!

I guess that is a nice feature, but I do wonder how I will know when it's done backing up.  I opened Task Manager and looked at the running processes (for All users not the Win7 default of just my user ID.)  Sure enough there was a Rebit-SaveMe-Svc.exe processing using 10 - 15% utilization, and when I listened closely to the external HD then I could hear it writing.

I don't think it will take long to back up because there should not be a lot of data changed.  Anyway I just wanted to share that this really does not require any user intervention other than plugging in an external drive.  I think the question users will have, especially if they back up more than one computer with the drive will be, "How do I know when it's done?"

A bit later I actually rebooted my laptop.  When I originally plugged in the external HD the laptop was already booted up and I just hot-plugged the USB-connected HD.  The Rebit icon in the system tray did not appear at that point.  But when I rebooted my laptop and logged in with the external HD connected then the Rebit icon did appear in the system tray.  It is basically a status icon, and otherwise does not provide functionality such as performing the backup.  But this status icon does make it easier to see whether the backup is complete or not.  If you right-click it and choose properties then it will indicate the date and time when the backup was complete (Protected as of...) and if you click the Rebit SaveMe tab then it will show you the last recovery points.  So for the curious user who wants to know if their backup is done so they can disconnect and move the HD to another laptop, this would be one place to look.