Ashampoo Backup Pro 27 review: Easy, effective PC backup, but not ‘pro’ | usagoldmines.com

Price When Reviewed

$25 perpetual license I $16 per month subscription

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Despite the somewhat odd name, Ashampoo peddles some very effective software. Not the least of which is Backup Pro 27. For the average home user, it’s a friendly and solid backup solution.

However, the program is still missing a couple of features that would make it truly “Pro” and ditched another — real-time/continuous backup — for version 27 .

Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best Windows backup software for comparison.

What’s new in Ashampoo Backup Pro 27?

Other than the aforementioned deprecation of real-time/continuous backup, Backup Pro 27’s biggest morph is a rather significant alteration to the workflow and the way it’s presented — i.e., there’s a new, friendlier look that can operate in both light and dark modes.

Gone is the division between simple and comprehensive wizards. Now there is a single approach with all pertinent options packed into a couple of scrollable pages. It’s simple enough for anyone, and offers easy access to all the bells and whistles that advanced users might utilize.

However, as mentioned above and shown below, missing in action this go-around is the “real-time” backup I tested last time. I used quotes because it was more continuous backup than real time, backing up at granular intervals (continuous), not as files changed (real time).

However, even that continuous granularity is gone. While I found a way to back up hourly, or even every few minutes, defining it was exceedingly tedious — requiring a “New Time Entry” for every additional occurrence. Why? I suppose someone thinks that users never want to back up more than a couple times a day.

Beyond that, the major functionality remains intact. Additionally, the program as a whole is more mature and stable. Indeed, I suffered none of the installation and operational bugs I did with version 26, which admittedly, was only a day old at the time I first tested it.

What are Ashampoo Backup Pro 27’s features?

Backup Pro 27 lets you image entire partitions and drives (incremental and full — no differential), back up files and folders with versioning (keeping older copies), and disaster recovery — including boot media. In case the term “imaging” is new to you, it’s copying all the data blocks on a drive into a container file. Generally, empty sectors are bypassed.

Backup Pro 27 uses the relatively common .vmdk format as its backup container. This, however, is a feature that could be considered “pro” as it is the native virtual drive format for VMWare. The free VirtualBox also can open this virtual drive for browsing.

However, browsing using VM software is only possible if you don’t encrypt the images (you can compress). If you do encrypt, you must use Backup Pro to mount the image and restore files. I think Microsoft’s VHD would have been a better choice, as you could mount those with nothing more than Windows itself. Just saying.

Backup Pro must also be used for file/folder backups that are encrypted and/or compressed. File/folder backups that aren’t encrypted may, of course, be browsed using nothing but Windows Explorer.

While Backup Pro will create a rescue USB stick or CD/DVD, the usual option for creating an ISO image doesn’t exist. But what I also find less than “pro” is that the rescue disk is restore-only — i.e., there’s no facility for creating new backups when you boot using it.

Many users will only want to restore, but backing up before attempting to solve someone’s software or hardware issues is something most pros do religiously.

Note that even if your subscription (see the pricing section below) expires, the rescue media will still restore backups.

Conspicuously missing from the cloud destinations are Amazon S3 and S3 compatibles, which often offer the best value. To utilize these with any backup software, use one of the utilities in our roundup of cloud managers. But this lack, again is not “pro.”

One thing I’d like to see is Backup Pro show physical drives with their numbers and partitions grouped together in some fashion rather than separated as you’ll see below (the first two hidden partitions are on the same disk as Windows, but inexperienced users might not realize this.

There is an info box saying pertinent hidden and system partitions will also be backed up when you select any partition on a bootable disk, the Windows drive in this case. A good thing, as disaster recovery requires all of them.

Back on the sunny side…. A couple of the very useful Backup Pro features are the ability to trigger backups on media insertion, and support for network locations as both sources and destinations. These do drift towards the “pro” side of the equation as many end-user targeted backup programs only back up to network locations.

There’s also a handy “Check Disks” utility so you can determine the health and status of your local media.

How does Ashampoo Backup Pro 27 perform?

Unlike my first look at Backup Pro 26, version 27 performed flawlessly from the jump. Of course, this time I didn’t have the older version installed which is what caused issues last time.

Backup Pro 27 never glitched during any of the multiple tasks I threw at it: Imaging and file backup, local and online, encrypted/compressed, unencrypted/uncompressed, plus restore of all.

Speed-wise, all was about par for the course given the media used for the destination. When I say par, backup software generally operates at around half the maximum transfer rate of any given media.

How much is Ashampoo Backup Pro 27?

A perpetual license for Backup Pro 27 was available at the time of this writing for $25, discounted from $66. You can also rent it for $16 per year, though I’d stick with uncompressed, unencrypted backups if a subscription is your choice. Otherwise you’ll only be able to restore those compressed/encrypted backups from the recovery disc if and when the subscription lapses.

Those discounted prices are lower than I saw last time when the perpetual version was $33 and the yearly was $18.

Should you buy Ashampoo Backup Pro 27?

Backup Pro 27’s support for so many common backup chores, plus its comprehensive, easy-to-understand interface are major selling points for less-experienced users. If it meets your needs (there’s a trial), at $25, heck yeah.

But the lack of backup from the recovery disc, no differential backup, and the newly limited scheduling are definitely not “pro” in my book. I’d balk big time at the full $66 retail.

I strongly advise that you don’t rent (pay yearly) Backup Pro as the program seems to be shedding features rather than gaining them. The pace of development in the backup space in general is so slow, not to mention largely unnecessary, consider that general advice. Unless there’s online storage involved, that is.