Ashampoo Backup Pro

Ashampoo Backup Pro is a powerful system backup tool that automatically creates copies of your important files and stores them either locally or on your cloud drives of many of the major providers such as Google Drive, One Drive or Dropbox.

The program can create encrypted backups that keep your data secure and allow you to recover your system from any disaster quickly and easily.

The program comes with a simple and self-descriptive user interface which is characterized by a minimalist design. To start backing up your information, you need to create a backup plan, which is an easy task thanks to the wizard the program includes for this. First of all, you start by selecting whether to create a local backup or a remote one and, in case you select the first option, you can select the drive and folder to store your backup, including network drives. If on the other hand, you prefer to create an online backup, you need to authorize the access of the program to your cloud drive's account, which is done using your default web browser.

Whichever method you choose, you can then provide a name for your plan, select whether to backup entire drives (including your system one) or individual files/folders, whether to compress your backed up data, whether to encrypt and protect it with a password, schedule the automatic execution of the plan, select whether to create a backup report, its detail level and optionally provide an email address for the report to be sent automatically, and provide the number of days to keep the older versions of your backups. As you can see, this creation process involves a considerable number of parameters that, although they allow you to configure very detailed and customized backup jobs, they can become intimidating and frustrating for beginners.

Restoring your files is a much simpler process, as you just need to select your backup plan, the files/folders to be restored and the folder where they should be restored. You are also allowed to restore local or remote backups even if they are not part of your configured plans. Last but not least, the "Rescue System" section of the program allows you to create a bootable USB stick or CD/DVD which is very useful to restore your system in case it won't boot anymore due to viruses, wrong drivers/programs installations, or any other problem. Of course, to get a successful system restore you need to have created an entire-drive backup of your system drive first.

In conclusion, Ashampoo Backup Pro is a very comprehensive backup utility that provides you with all the required tools and parameters to keep your data and system protected against many kinds of threats. By default, you can try the program for 8 days for free, but you can extend this trial period up to 20 days, which involves creating an account with Ashampoo.