It’s very easy to lose important or personal files and images when your computer crashes or is destroyed. The crash might be caused by a virus or hard drive failure. Even worse a fire or flooding could wipe out your computer and everything on it.
You might keep your back up files for your website on your PC or prepare your future blog posts on your computer, imagine losing all this information.
Whatever the cause, losing important data might mean losing weeks or months of work. This is where a good backup program can save you.
You never know how important it is to back up your computer until you have a problem but have no backup.
If you have ever been in this situation you probably set out to always have a backup somewhere to restore your files. If you’re like me you start off with good intentions but over time you get a little lax.
Backups can be tedious and time-consuming to create but there are some software solutions that can make the process easy and fast.
In this post, we’ll look at one of these software solutions, Aomei Backupper, and see if it’s something you should consider.
What is Aomei Backupper Standard?
Aomei Backupper is software to back up a Windows PC or server. It makes it very easy to back up your files, your entire disc, your system or the different partitions on your disc to avoid data loss.
Aomei supports Windows operating systems XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10 and Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2011, and 2012.
Aomei Backupper Standard is free software, there are paid editions if you need more features.
You can set it up to back up your most important documents or files every time they are modified. This will give you peace of mind knowing that your important files are stored elsewhere whenever needed.
As you can see below Aomei can perform a wide range of different backup tasks making it an ideal backup software choice.
Aomei Features
Getting Started the program interface is very simple and easy to use. Even if you’re doing your first backup you shouldn’t have any problem using this software.
Here are some of the different things Aomei can do for you.
Backups
File Backup
You can copy your important files and folders to another device such as a DVD, external hard drive or online storage. This will enable you to restore your important files to your computer from the backup image after disaster strikes.
Disk Backup
A disk backup is an image that contains all the data on your hard drive. This includes the operating system, boot information, different programs, and your files. The disk backup will back up the different partitions on your disk.
A partition is a segment of the hard drive separated from the other segments. For example, I have 2 partitions with 2 different operating systems one with Windows and the other with Linux.
System Backup
A system backup is the process of backing up the operating system files, boot files, and program files. There may be more than a single partition included in this backup.
Partition Backup
If you don’t need to back up the entire disk then you can select just the partitions you require.
File Sync
File sync allows you to synchronize files or folders to other locations such as an external hard drive or a USB flash drive. You can schedule your folders to automatically update.
Incremental and Differential Backups
Differential and incremental backups differ from other forms of backups in that they only back up files that have changed. This can save both time and storage space.
The differential backup will back up files that have changed since the last full back up. Say you do a full backup on Monday, on Tuesday you will back up the files that have changed since Monday, on Wednesday you back up the files that have changed since Monday.
Over a period of time, the amount of data you back up increases on each occasion you do a backup. Each day, the differential backup will become larger. Each new backup has the changes from the previous day in addition to all the changes since the last full backup
With an incremental backup, you only back up the data that has changed since the previous back up whether it is a full or incremental backup. This leads to smaller and faster backups.
You must perform a full system backup before you can create an incremental or differential backup. Once done you can schedule your incremental or differential backups at the frequency you require.
Restore
If your files and folders are lost or damaged you use Aomei Backupper Standard restore them to the last backup image.
Your operating system crashes, you can restore to the latest system backup. Aomei gives you the facility to create a bootable media to boot up your computer.
If your disk is broken, contaminated with a virus, too small or you have lost data on your hard disk, you can recover everything by doing a disk restore.
You can restore a partition if the information has been compromised or lost. You could use a disk backup and select the partition you require or a partition backup.
If you have AOMEI Backupper Professional, Server or Technician versions you can do a universal restore. This allows you to restore a system image from one computer to another. Useful if you have a crashed computer. You create an image on another PC and then restore this image to your crashed computer. Another use of this feature could be to install an operating system and programs on a new computer.
Clone
Disk Clone
Disk cloning is the process of copying all the data on a computer’s hard disk to another disk. As a default, Aomei will clone all existing data on a disk and not include deleted items. The software will verify if there is enough space on the destination disk. The cloning will take place without interrupting any programs that are running.
This operation could be used to transfer all the information on a disk (operating system, installed programs, boot files, and all your files) from a small hard drive to a larger one. This avoids having to reinstall and reconfigure your software.
System Clone
This makes an exact copy of your operating system and transfers it to another disk. This will copy your version of Windows and also any installed programs, drivers, updates and custom settings.
This action can be useful if you change disks for better performance or a larger disk. You could also install your current operating system and programs on a new computer.
System clone is available is the paid version of Aomei Backupper.
Partition Clone
The partition clone will clone a partition of a disk to another disk.
Utilities
This section provides features to make sure your backups and recoveries go as planned.
Check Image
Checks your backup image to make sure all the data can be restored.
Explore Image
This feature allows you to mount your backup image so you can access the different files in read-only mode. If you have lost certain files from your hard drive you can mount the image to the partition in question and just select the files you need to restore.
Merge Images
If you have carried out a full backup and subsequently use incremental backups which is a good backup routine, then restoring can get a little complicated. You will have to restore your last full backup and all the incremental backups.
To make things easier Aomei Backupper provides the Merge Image feature. This can combine the full backup and the incremental backups into one image file. This feature is only available with the paid versions of the software.
Create Bootable Media
This feature allows you to create an emergency Windows or Linux bootable media using a CD/DVD or USB Flash Drive. This is particularly useful if your PC has crashed and won’t boot up.
There are a few other features in the utilities section but these are the ones I consider the most useful.
Support
There is a good online support section with guides on the different backups, cloning, restores, utilities, and FAQs. There is also a forum where you can ask questions and get replies from other users or the tech staff.
Should you still have problems after going through the different documents you can get technical support by sending an email.
If you don’t want to go online to get an answer to a problem, you can download the Aomei Buckupper User Manual as a PDF.
How Much Does Aomei Cost?
The Standard edition of Aomei Backupper is free and for most users, this will be sufficient for your backup needs.
To get the free version you don’t need to enter any personal details.
If you are thinking of buying a new computer or hard disk it could be worth paying for the Professional version. This will give you the advantage of migrating your operating system and programs to another disk or restoring an image of your current hard disk to another computer.
If you want to try one of the paid versions they offer a 30-day free trial for the Professional or Server Editions. I appreciated that even for the free trials you don’t need to enter any personal information or your credit card details.
For all of the paid versions, there is an unconditional 90-day guarantee and free lifetime upgrades. If you feel you don’t need the lifetime upgrades you can just pay for the current version. This reduces the price for the Professional Edition to $39.95.
Download Aomei Backupper
Customer Complaints
Most customers seem to be happy with Aomei Backupper. With a few reviews on Trustpilot and comments such as “best backup software I’ve found” or “great software company”. There are also customers that are not happy with the support and customer service.
There are more customer reviews on Capterra.com and these are all positive with an average score of 4.5/5.
Conclusion
Aomei Backupper should definitely be considered if you are thinking about getting a backup software. The free version probably has all the features you need and is very easy for anyone to get started.
You will be able to create locally stored backups and restore your hard disk or important files whenever you have a problem.
We hope you have found this Aomei backup review useful. Don’t risk losing important files or digital memories, create a backup now.
If you have any experience with Aomei Backupper or any other backup software let us know in the comments section below.
