DIGISTOR REWIND Archiving Software

Model: DIGISTOR REWIND Archiving Software
Manufacturer: DIGISTOR
Provided By: DIGISTOR

DIGISTOR is a leading innovator, manufacturer and distributor of digital archiving products and secure storage solutions. Serving the industrial and global OEM market since 2001, DIGISTOR also now provides industrial-grade archiving and digital-video storage solutions to consumers and professional end users. Along with a number of DVD and Blu-ray burners, the company's product lineup includes portable hard drives, recordable Blu-ray media and other digital storage solutions.

As the amount of digital data continues to grow, it’s more important than ever to keep a secure, permanent copy of your files. Unfortunately, most people make little or no effort to protect their personal data and could easily lose a lifetime of photographs at any time. Those that do back up their data often use an external hard drive or USB flash drive. While easy to use, neither solution is designed for longevity and they will eventually fail. Not to mention, having your backup sitting on a drive right next to your computer doesn't help much in the case of fire, theft or other natural disaster. Cloud-based backup solutions solve both of these problems by offering redundant offsite backup. However, it opens the door for a host of other concerns including cost, bandwidth and the security of your data.

While not nearly as popular as it once was, recordable optical media is an affordable and effective way to archive your data. Most people already have a DVD writer in their computer and recordable CDs and DVDs are relatively cheap. More importantly, good quality discs will last for decades if stored and handled correctly. Aside from the fact that it takes more work to burn a disc than to setup an automated backup to hard drive, the biggest downside of recordable CDs and DVDs is their capacity. With a maximum capacity of 700MB, CD-R/RW media is nearly obsolete and single layer, recordable DVD discs are not far behind. Thankfully, the Blu-ray format has given optical media a much needed boost, offering capacities of 25GB, 50GB and now 100GB on a single disc and a longevity of up to 50 years or more.

As you'd expect, DIGISTOR has been a strong supporter of the Blu-ray format. The company sees it as being the easiest and most cost effective method for the average consumer, photographer or video professional to permanently store their data. To help streamline this process, DIGISTOR recently launched its REWIND archiving software for PC and Mac. This affordable alternative to hard drive and cloud-based backup solutions enables permanent and secure archiving on Blu-ray discs. Designed for ease-of-use by both consumers and professional users, REWIND features a user-friendly interface as well as automatic file and folder tracking. It also has the ability to update existing archives, span multiple discs and pause an archive mid-burn, letting you finish it later. Along with that, it has an embedded restore application that ensures restoration of archived files to any computer, without having to install software.

Now let's take a closer look at DIGISTOR's REWIND software and see how well it works when creating, updating and restoring archives.

REWIND ships on a CD containing both the Windows and Mac versions of the software. The program is compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7 as well as Mac OS X 10.6 or newer. For this review, we're going to focus on the Windows version of REWIND.

To begin, insert the REWIND disc into your computer's Blu-ray drive. If you have autorun enabled on your computer, the installation wizard will automatically launch and the window pictured below will appear. If it doesn't run automatically, you will need to locate and run the installer file on the CD.

The first thing you'll see is the Start tab. From here you can create a new archive or continue an existing one. To create a new archive, enter a unique archive name and then click the Next button.

The Select Files tab is where you choose which files and folders you want included in your archive. The easiest way to add files and folders to your archive is to drag and drop them directly into REWIND's file browser. You can also use the provided shortcuts to go directly to the areas where your documents, pictures, music and video are commonly stored. To include a file or folder in your archive, check the box to the left of the icon. You can also click and drag the cursor to select multiple files or folders.

The Preview Files tab displays a list of the files you have selected for the archive. On this screen you can review your selections and remove any files you do not want included in the archive.

On the Create Archive tab you select the Blu-ray archive burner and the speed you want to burn the archive at. The disc name is a shortened version of the archive name and is automatically generated by REWIND. You can edit the name if you want to but the disc number cannot be changed. REWIND also gives you the option to verify the data while writing. Keep in mind, this process will add to the overall burn time. When you're ready to burn your archive to disc, click the "Archive It" button. A progress indicator shows you how much of the archive burn has been completed.

The Finish Later button appears after the burning process begins. Clicking it allows you to stop burning the archive before it is completed. Files that have not yet been burned to disc remain selected and are burned when the archive is continued. Clicking Finish Later allows you to pause your archive mid-burn and continue burning it at a later time.

REWIND also gives you the ability to continue or update an archive. To do so, select the name of an existing archive from the list on the Start tab and click the Next button. In this case, I'm going to update the Home Directory archive that I created earlier.

REWIND automatically keeps track of the files and folders selected for archive. When updating an archive, the program will go and scan your computer to see if the files in the archive have been modified and if any new files or folders have been added to a tracked folder. At this point, you can also add new files and folders from other locations to your archive.

From the Preview Files tab, you can view a list of files currently in the archive as well as those that are new or have been modified. If you'd like to remove any new files from the archive, you can do so at this point.

When you're ready to continue or update your archive, insert the specified disc into the selected Blu-ray burner and click the "Continue Archive" button.

Archives created with the Windows version of REWIND can be restored to nearly any Windows-based computer. Simply insert the archive disc into a Blu-ray drive and run the Restore app directly from the disc.

The screenshot above shows the contents of a disc I created earlier. Along with the LaunchRestore executable, there are a handful of folders containing the File Restore application, archived files and the database that the program uses to keep track of them. Sadly, REWIND does not put both the Windows and Mac binaries on an archive disc. I even dusted off my Mac Mini to check and see if there were any hidden files that I couldn't see in Windows.

When you launch the LaunchRestore executable, it will first ask if you want to restore the files from the archive on the disc. If you say yes, you'll be presented with the screen shown below. As you can see, the File Restore app looks very similar to the one used to create the archive. From within the Select Files tab, you can choose which files you restore from your archive.

The Preview Files tab displays a list of the files you have selected to restore. On this screen you can review your selections and remove any files you do not want to restore.

The Restore Location tab allows you to choose where you want to restore your files. By default, REWIND will restore your files to the desktop.

On the Restore Archive tab you can see which archive discs you'll need to restore the selected files. Once you begin restoring files, you can stop any time by clicking the Stop Restore button.

There are a lot of backup solutions out there and while most do an adequate job of backing your data up to an external hard drive, flash drive or NAS device, archiving to optical media is, more often than not, just an afterthought. In the case of DIGISTOR's REWIND software, its sole purpose is to archive your data to Blu-ray disc and it does this quite well. Created to work on both Mac and PC, REWIND's user-friendly interface provides access to both basic and advanced feature sets. Its three step archiving system is simple enough for a novice, yet powerful enough for more experienced users. REWIND also includes features like automatic file and folder tracking as well as the ability to update an existing archive. With its ability to span multiple discs, you can also keep an archive going forever. Restoring your data is just as easy and with the app embedded on the disc, you don't need to have the software installed on your computer.

That being said, there are a few features I'd like to see included in REWIND. First and foremost is some sort of encryption. If you're archiving confidential data, there needs to be some way to prevent people from accessing the files on a disc if it should fall into the wrong hands. I'd also like to see some sort of versioning built into REWIND. The software already has the ability to track and keep files in the archive up to date and being able to restore an earlier version of a file would be very useful. Lastly, I'd like to see both Mac and PC restore apps on the archive discs. The way it is right now, if you create the archive on a Windows-based PC, you cannot restore your data to a Mac using the embedded app.

REWIND is available now and comes bundled with DIGISTOR's external Blu-ray drives. The software can also be purchased separately through DIGISTOR's website as well as Amazon.com for $49.99.