This blog post provides a review of Ashampoo Backup 2018.
Introduction
I had been thinking about changing my backup software and decided to use Ashampoo Backup 2018. At the time of writing this review, the backup software is free via Shareware On Sale and is reduced to £9.99 GBP at Ashampoo’s website. I hope you find the review helpful.
Note: I’ve not been paid to write this blog post. The majority of the screenshots have been resized.
A quick overview
The backup software is able to backup one or more hard drives to a folder via a schedule or you can run the backup manually. You can set how many old backups to keep.
This software is for those wanting to perform whole disk backups, recover files from those backups or restore whole drives. According to a page on Ashampoo’s website, you can backup to a local disk, removable storage, NAS or WebDAV.
You can created a rescue system disc via the software. You’re able to view backups as virtual drives and restore a backup via a disc or the installed software.
It shouldn’t be underestimated how good the design of the software is. A novice should easily be able to use the software and initiate their first backup quickly.
How I used the backup software
As mentioned the software design is good and it was easy to configure. I performed a couple of manual backups and was impressed by the ease of accessing the backup files via virtual drives.
I think backup automation is important and the schedule feature is easy to configure and activate. When I used the software, it ran smoothly, never presented an error message or failed to backup.
I scheduled a backup of a drive with my important files and folders to a secondary hard drive in my computer.
Recovering the files
I’ve not used the rescue system disc, but I was impressed by the ‘Show Backup Contents’ option.
It was great that I was able to access files in my backup quickly with just a few clicks of the mouse.
On my old quad core computer, it quickly opened a backup as a virtual drive and I then used Windows 10’s File Explorer to look through the backup.
Conclusion
I personally felt this software performed well. The software is easy to use, but there are limitations that shouldn’t be overlooked. Being able to schedule a whole disc backup is a good first step, but I don’t think it’s enough. I’ve just watched a video about Ashampoo Backup Pro 12 and that looks interesting.
I do think it’s also important to be able to schedule different types of backups to multiple locations, and not just a whole disk backup to one location. A good example, is that I want more regular backups of a small selection of files. That is why I won’t be using Ashampoo Backup 2018 on my primary computer.
I am considering using the software on the computer which I mainly use for gaming. With the view to automating the backup of the main drive to a second internal drive or a NAS drive.
I like Ashampoo Backup 2018. If you’ve got a scenario where this software meets your needs, then it is worth considering. It has a great design and what it does, I found it did well on my old computer.
There are some good competitors, and you might also want to look at Cobian Backup, EaseUS Todo Backup and MiniTool Partition Wizard. At the time of writing, Cobian Backup hasn’t been updated in a long time, which is a shame.