Dead Simple Data Backup from Rebit

We all know we need to back up our computer regularly. It becomes especially important if traveling with an easily-stolen laptop holding months' worth of precious photo memories, music, and video. But it's a hassle right? So most of us seldom get around to it.

I've been testing a new solution that has finally solved the problem for good. It's a small external hard drive called Rebit and here are the instructions. 1) Plug the USB cord into the Rebit and your computer. 2) Click "OK" when the prompts come up on your screen. 3) Go on with whatever you were doing.

Yes, it really is that easy. You can keep surfing the web or answering e-mail and the device backs up everything on your computer, with no effort on your part. After the first round---which for obvious reasons takes quite a few hours---it will then back up any changes you have made whenever you plug it in. Again, it does its thing in the background and purposely doesn't hog all your resources to slow you down. Then you can pull up Windows Explorer and voila---the hard drive has an exact image of your own computer, with all the data there as well as applications and e-mails.

The only bug I encountered was that my Dell with XP couldn't boot up with this plugged in. Tech support says this seems to be something in my hardware configuration; they hadn't encountered this before. I didn't care anyway since I would rather just let it catch up now and then than leave it plugged in all the time.

For now anyway the Rebit works only with PCs. The small ones appropriate for travel are available in capacities from 80GB ($169 list) to 160GB ($219 list). You can get higher capacity for a home PC, but the units are larger.

I can't remember the last time I was this thrilled with a piece of computer hardware. For once a company's marketing tag line is entirely accurate: "ridiculously simple backup." See more about how Rebit works and buy direct at the Rebit website.