Aomei Backupper Pro review: All-in-one backup, now with online storage

Price When Reviewed

$39.95

Best Prices Today: Aomei Backupper Professional

Our final have a look at Aomei Backupper’s imaging, file backup, and sync program was at model 6, and it was a tad buggy, however creating apace.

Version 7 of Aomei Backupper Professional provides extremely inexpensive Aomei Cloud on-line storage to combine, in addition to focused backups for e mail and Outlook for many who don’t know the place that information resides. More importantly, Backupper appears extra secure and dependable.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best Windows backup software to study competing merchandise.

What are Aomei Backupper Professional’s options?

Backupper’s present options run the gamut of backup performance together with: imaging of your recordsdata/folders, system, drives, and partitions; Linux and Windows PE catastrophe restoration boot media; system/disk/partition cloning; a number of flavors of folder sync.

Backups and syncs could also be saved wherever, to any kind of non-optical media (optical is supported for boot discs), together with community places, which can even be chosen for backup. Alas, a long-standing gripe has but to be addressed: You can’t browse to pick out a community location. You should manually enter the placement, e.g., 192.168.1.105/Public, or map the guardian folder as a Windows drive.

You can schedule backups as granularly as one hour (steady is on the market as real-time sync), in addition to run pre- and post-backup instructions, together with scripts.

Beyond that, Aomei’s changelog lists principally smaller enhancements and optimizations. All welcome, however nothing notably attractive.

Backupper additionally contains numerous storage-related utilities, together with a disk-wipe app that can overwrite delicate information, destroy malware, and so on; a picture explorer so you possibly can browse recordsdata on photographs; a picture integrity checker; and a hidden emergency partition containing a restoration copy of your Windows set up (one-key restoration), as you’ll discover on massive distributors’ PCs.

The varied forms of sync obtainable with Professional embrace Basic Sync (see the picture under), which backs up newly added or modified (changing the older model) recordsdata to the vacation spot, however leaving recordsdata deleted from the supply in place within the vacation spot. 

Mirroring maintains an actual duplicate of the supply folder’s contents within the vacation spot folder, eradicating recordsdata deleted from the supply folder. Two-way sync merely implies that modifications made in both the supply or vacation spot folder are duplicated within the different. Real-time sync is simply what’s feels like: instantaneous mirroring of modifications made within the supply folder to the vacation spot, quite than by scheduling.

While lots of the superior options mentioned above can be found solely within the Professional and Enterprise variations of Backupper, many customers might be simply positive with the fundamentals obtainable within the free model. There’s a version comparison here if you’d like the entire lowdown.

How simple is Aomei Backupper to make use of?

Aomei Backupper is sort of comparable in each look and workflow to Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, although neither are notably ground-breaking: A column of primary classes on the left, with a pane of sub-categories to the proper that morph into element view. The GUI is clear and the options are defined with simply comprehensible language. Kudos to the English translators — it’s spectacular. 

That mentioned, whereas the PDF assist file is sort of thorough and well-written, you need to learn it in its entirety first. It lacks hyperlinks that may allow you to leap from a subject within the desk of contents to the topic itself. A small, however mildly annoying time-waster.

The upshot is that this system could be very simple to make use of. If you perceive backup in any respect, you gained’t have any problem utilizing Backupper. If you’re new to backup, your studying curve needs to be minimal. 

Of course, the free model, which is what most individuals will begin off with, suffers a perpetual improve nag on the primary display screen, in addition to different hints that for those who just like the software program, you need to in all probability help the corporate that supplied it. True that.

How a lot is Aomei Backupper?

This is a extra difficult subject than with many merchandise, and the pricing is totally different relying on the place you look, so bear with me.

Backupper is on the market in two consumer-oriented variations: Standard, which is free and surprisingly succesful, and Professional (reviewed right here) for $39.95 yearly (typically on sale), which provides a complete bunch of superior options to the Standard model — together with Aomei Cloud at a further $20 a yr, for a complete of $60.

The latter was the improve worth proven inside the program. In one other spot on the Aomei web site, it was solely $10 for Cloud, for a complete of $50. Whether this was locked in for subsequent years, I can’t say. I doubt it, however getting a straight reply from Aomei was practically unattainable. More possible it’s the $20/$30 mentioned under.

A perpetual license is $69.95 for one consumer, or $89.95 for 5 customers, however this doesn’t embrace cloud storage. Aomei presents this to perpetual customers at $20 a yr based on media relations, or $30 based on tech help. Either means, it’s fairly the cut price, although it will probably solely be used along with Backupper. OneDrive is $70 yearly for 1TB by the use of comparability.

There are additionally small enterprise plans: Workstation for $50 yearly with PXE boot ($60 with the 1TB of on-line storage), Server for $150 with help for varied Windows server working techniques. Additionally, two enterprise-oriented variations can be found: Technician for $499, and Technician Plus for $699 with picture deployment and the moveable model. 

How quick and dependable is Aomei Backupper Pro?

After some preliminary points on our software program take a look at mattress on account of different software program put in (almost definitely detritus from a failed FileShadow uninstall), Backupper carried out each rapidly and with out error. Imaging, file backup, and sync to each native, community, and on-line proceeded apace given the bandwidth obtainable on every medium.

Creating restoration disks was simple, together with automated obtain of the required Windows PE recordsdata; and each the Linux and Windows PE variations booted simply positive on PCs. Restore and clone operations to a alternative SSD carried out flawlessly as properly.

While all the things went off okay in the long run, Backupper is sometimes tough across the edges and never notably informative if one thing goes incorrect. For occasion, once I tried to again up a community location that had an excessive amount of information for the native vacation spot, it didn’t inform me of that. It simply “cancelled” the job with an error 23 within the log.

Another small glitch was that when creating a brand new folder within the vacation spot choice dialog, Backupper didn’t replace the title once I renamed the folder to one thing significant. It as an alternative mentioned it couldn’t discover “New folder.” Selecting one other merchandise, after which the renamed folder, mounted the problem.

These are certainly minor points, however together with the link-less assist PDF, they do give me the impression that maybe Aomei’s programmers and testers don’t sweat the small print as a lot as they need to.

Regardless, in the long run, once I didn’t attempt to overload a vacation spot and had cleaned out the take a look at mattress, Backupper proved quick and secure. An actual enchancment during the last iteration.

Should you purchase Aomei Backupper?

The free model of Backupper is a no brainer. Download it and have at it. However, the corporate’s persevering with lack of consideration to element and obscured pricing for the net storage leaves R-Drive Image and Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office as my high advisable pay choices. Then once more, 1TB of storage for $20/$30 a yr is incredible. Just do not forget that it’s solely usable as a backup repository for Backupper.

Note that you need to use any backup software program, together with the free Backupper Standard, with practically any on-line storage service as of late due to cloud storage managers.