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Ashampoo Backup Pro 15 Review & Giveaway

Ashampoo Backup Pro 15

Winners Announced!

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Ashampoo has graciously offered our DCT readers a chance to win one of five licenses for their new Backup Pro 15 software. At the time of writing these licenses are normally valued at $49.99 (US) but are currently discounted to $29.99. If you enter our contest, you might just win a copy for free!

“Ashampoo® Backup Pro 15 takes the fear out of viruses, ransomware, or hardware issues! Experience an easy to use well-designed but powerful backup solution. The new Ashampoo® Backup Pro 15 offers you all possible storage options: Back up single files to entire partitions to local drives or online storage providers. In addition, the program is light on resources, gets out of your way and does all the heavy lifting in the background. Naturally, it can also restore your backups. Ashampoo® Backup Pro 15 even comes with a bootable rescue system to restore your system in the event of major system failure!” ~ Ashampoo

Installation

As with all Ashampoo products, installation is a straightforward process with no unexpected bloatware to accompany it. It does add an Ashampoo Deals icon to your desktop but that can easily be deleted if you are not interested.

System Requirements

  • Operating SystemWindows® 10, Windows® 8, Windows® 7
  • Computer: Any computer that supports the above operating systems
  • Other: An Internet connection is required to activate the program. The program license is verified repeatedly at regular intervals
  • Full administrative rights are required to use the program

Features

  • Well laid out user interface with all important information
  • Single-click access to all important menus
  • Presets for ready-to-use backup plans
  • Handy backup plan overview
  • Detailed information on each backup
  • Up-to-date cloud support
  • Extensive online help and printable PDFs
  • Better stability, flexibility, and performance

Ease Of Use

I can’t resist a good backup program so decided to run this one through its paces. As mentioned before, installation was a fast and painless process.

Opening Screen

 

ashampoo-backup-pro-15-opening-screen

Clicking on the “hamburger” menu at the top left corner will open a sidebar explaining what all those icons mean. Let’s dive in and create a Backup Plan.

Creating A Backup Plan

Creating a backup plan involves several steps to complete and that is due to the flexibility of this software. You can choose from several different types of media such as an internal/external drive all the way to the Cloud if you like:

ashampoo-backup-pro-15-storage-choices

To keep it simple, I simply chose a local drive.

In subsequent windows, you will be asked for a backup name, whether you would like it to be encrypted, and/or compressed, or run on a schedule. Backup Pro will also offer you the choice of a couple of predefined templates or you can define your own setup:

ashampoo-backup-pro-15-templates

If you choose to define your own, then you can fine-tune all the settings to suit your personal needs. You can choose to back up an entire disk, a partition, or individual files. I ran a full backup of my Windows system disk. I also told Backup Pro to validate the backup upon completion. Here’s a shot of the backup in progress:

ashampoo-backup-pro-15-progress

About 10 minutes into the backup, I decided to see how much of a hit my system would suffer if I opened up a browser to surf around a bit. This is when I discovered that Backup Pro paused its work. This meant that as long as I was doing something else, there was no backup progress being made. Well, that’s unacceptable, I thought. Then I discovered that there was a setting for this:

ashampoo-backup-pro-15-automatic-pausing

It really pays to check the settings before you use a program for the first time. Had I noticed this, I would have disabled this behavior immediately. C’est la vie…

Backup Completed And Report

Here is a report showing the particulars of this backup session:

ashampoo-backup-pro-15-report

This report is opened up in your browser and it shows a lot of interesting information including the compression results and the amount of time it took. The compression result seems a bit misleading. Yes, the drive is about 150GB in size and yes, the compressed backup file is about 25% of that. What it doesn’t show is that the original size of the combined files on that disk is about 51.5GB. That means the actual compression was closer to 50%. There is nothing wrong with this. In my experience, the backup programs I have used in the past have all achieved this compression rate, so this is acceptable.

The time it took seemed a bit long to me. 25 minutes for this size of a backup is more time than I am used to. Then again, if I had turned off that Automatic Pause in the first place, it wouldn’t have mattered to me.

Final Thoughts 👍

Ashampoo has produced a fine backup solution that is easy to use and is very flexible. Being able to create backups to the Cloud seems like a big plus! The ability to encrypt along with a reasonably high compression rate are also welcome positives.

I would not hesitate to recommend this software. It does what it says it will do.

How To Enter The Contest

We’d appreciate it if you’d take a moment and submit a comment telling us why you’d like to win Ashampoo Backup Pro 15. However, submitting a comment is not required to enter this contest and will have no bearing on your chances.

For your chance to win, simply enter your name and a valid email address in the spaces provided below. After your entry is accepted you will be presented with options to visit/follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and/or YouTube. By doing so, you will get more entries, increasing your chances of winning this giveaway contest.

Sharing the contest on social media is completely voluntary, but is encouraged.

Competition Rules:

  • To enter, simply submit your name and a Valid email address. Your address will not be shared outside of this site
  • You must submit a VALID email address. We need to contact the Winner, so disposable email addresses will not be eligible
  • Additional entries may be earned by voluntarily sharing on Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter, or by visiting our YouTube page
  • Shortly after the contest ends, the winner(s) will be chosen at random
  • Winner(s) names will be posted on this giveaway page. Please check back here to see the winner(s) name announcement!
  • The winner(s) will be notified by email at the email address used to enter the contest – be sure to use a valid email address that you check regularly
  • Winner(s) must claim their license within five (5) days. After the five (5) day period, unclaimed prizes will be distributed at DCT’s sole discretion
  • Entrants agree to allow DCT to communicate with them via email using the address provided by the entrant when entering the contest

Good luck to everyone!!

21 thoughts on “Ashampoo Backup Pro 15 Review & Giveaway”

  1. Harvey Blessing

    I NEED a non-confusing back up tool. I get confused over what kind of backup I should make.
    I’m OLD so it’s hard to learn new stuff.

    1. Richard Pedersen

      Hi Harvey,

      There is a basic Full backup. As the name implies, it backs up everything on the drive you choose.
      Second, there is a Differential backup. Once you have made a Full backup, successive backups will only back up the data that have changed since the last Full backup.
      And third, there is an Incremental backup. Incremental backups only back up the data that have changed since the last Incremental backup.

      The Differential and Incremental backups both depend on an initial Full backup to be made first.

      The benefits of a Differential backup are that they don’t take as long nor are they as big as a Full backup. Also, they don’t depend on a previous Differential backup to restore your data should you ever need that.

      The benefit of an Incremental backup is that they are generally very small and therefore take little time to complete. The downside is that each Incremental backup relies on the previous Incremental backup in order to restore your system. If the chain of Incremental backups is ever broken (ie, corrupted), then the original Full backup is your only recourse.

      I use a Differential backup scheme on my computer.

      I hope this helps,
      Richard

  2. Richard;
    You made no mention of the bootable rescue system. I’ve always used this method to do full image backups, because Windows is not involved in any way. Could you tell us what the rescue system is and how it works? Is it Linux or WinPE based?
    Thanks.

    1. Richard Pedersen

      Hi Ken,

      I didn’t try out the offline backup/restore options so I don’t know. I will have to ask my contact at Ashampoo.
      I’ll get back to you…

      1. Hey Guys,

        I am 99.9% certain Ashampoo Backup Pro creates WinPE based bootable rescue media. The following is an excerpt from the Ashampoo Backup Pro User Manual:

        The program will then begin creating the rescue medium with the help of the Windows Assessment Deployment Kit (ADK) which will automatically be downloaded and installed in case it’s not already installed on your machine.

        ADK includes WinPE and ADK is what is usually downloaded/used to create WinPE bootable rescue media.

  3. I too need a simple back up plan. this sounds excellent. Anyway I have aklways found advise on this site very reliable. Hope I win .

  4. David Langdon

    Hope to win this. Have used some of their other software with good results.

  5. Thanks to Ashampoo and DCT for this opportunity. I could really use a great backup software to avoid a catastrophic event. This sounds perfect.

  6. I currently use Ashampoo Backup Pro 12. Only had a minor problem on one computer doing a restore. Believe it was due to a hardware fault. Would be great to win this version, Mindblower1

  7. Ashampoo is good,I had the version 12,and I was very satisfied with it. I hope I win a key. Thanks.

  8. Very nice giveaway,this Ashampoo Backup Software. May be I win a license. Thanks a lot.

  9. I’m using only cracked software now. But I know it’s illegal. I’m going to change the situation and to start to use legal software only.

    1. Richard Pedersen

      Hi Igor,

      It is not only illegal but dangerous from a security standpoint, too.
      I am glad to hear that you are moving away from the dark side,
      Richard

  10. Humble Bundle is doing an AShampoo Bundle right now, and their backup program is available at the $1 level! The Bundle just started today and is available until 4/21/2021.

    I’m buying it tonight. I’m a split-personality computer user: mainly Mac, for which I use Time Machine, but also a long-time Windows guy (can you say PC-Dos 1.0?) and I’ve been looking for a good backup solution for my gaming laptop. I don’t like the concept of reload Windows/reinstall everything. That is _not_ a solution!

    Thanks for your review, Richard.

  11. I am just looking at this program and do not see where it does Differential Backups. Am I missing it somewhere ?

    1. Richard Pedersen

      Hi Steve,

      You are not missing anything. I asked Ashampoo about that and there is no differential backup option. They told me that they use a dynamic incremental backup system that is different than what you and I would call an incremental backup.
      They briefly explained it to me in an email; I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t pursue it. Ashampoo claims it is a better way of doing things.

      I am sure you could find a proper explanation somewhere on the internet, or directly from Ashampoo tech support,
      Richard

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