Product Reviews

There are plenty of data-protection and recovery products on the market that allow you to restore your system and OS in the event of a failure or error, but Juzt-Reboot aims to do it in seconds. This compact PCI card uses a proprietary chip and on-board BIOS to store a copy of the FAT (file allocation table), which it uses to restore a system back to the condition it was in when the last copy was taken.

Its application ranges from single users to network environments such as training and teaching. For example, once a class of students has finished trashing their PCs during a lesson, all the tutor needs to do is restart them and let Juzt-Reboot restore them automatically to their original condition. The express installation is swift. You plug in the card, boot up the system and on first contact the card installs a set of drivers from the supplied floppy. However, don't try fitting this card into a 64-bit PCI slot as it will stop the system from powering up. We were advised that the card requires 5V to operate, so only supports 32-bit slots.

At boot time the card displays a simple menu allowing you to save current OS partitions, create new ones and stop the drive from being low-level formatted. The card can check the CMOS settings

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at reboot and automatically restore them to their original state if it spots any changes. Up to 48 boot partitions are supported, and a countdown timer allows you to automatically boot to a pre-selected partition. Another handy option is a scheduler. This can be configured to operate hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or on specific days of the month. It will restore the system from the last backup on the first boot in the specified period. The Instant Recovery option in User mode keeps a record of every change made to the hard disk in the card's buffer. This supports only FAT16/32 and NTFS but allows all changes to be instantly discarded. The Backup Recovery mode supports just about every operating system except Mac OS, but requires a backup to be taken first before it can be used.

After backing up the drive on a Windows 2000 Professional system, we installed a pile of cover disc software and, after using the restore command at startup, found that it had all vanished without trace. For the next test, we destroyed the primary NTFS partition and rebooted the system to ensure it couldn't find a system disk. As with the previous test, it took only minutes to recover the entire system to its original functioning condition.

Juzt-Reboot could prove an invaluable ally in a variety of scenarios, but it certainly isn't a new idea. The concept first appeared as the PC Angel (see issue 83, p159), which impressed us at the time. But we also had reservations about the fact that the supplier had yet to break into the UK market and we experienced difficulties in contacting it. It's the same supplier, but it now distributes for Juzt-Innovations Technology USA, which apparently offers a far superior product and better support than the original Taiwanese manufacturer. Let's hope so, as the Juzt-Reboot is a very smart idea.