A note on versions: the review's own text says the problems it describes persist in version 8.7. The brief that came with this story said the review covered 8.5. The review text doesn't support that, so I'm going with 8.7. The review also mentions an 8.6.4 recovery disc build in a screenshot caption.
What Handy Backup Professional does
The vendor's download page lists Windows 11, 10, 8 and 7 SP1, plus Server 2025, 2022, 2019 and 2016, as supported systems. It currently offers version 8.7.4 as a 30-day free trial.
According to the review, the Professional edition has most of the options you'd expect from a backup suite:
- Restore and compression.
- Encryption, with 256-bit AES as the maximum.
- Scheduling, set under a "custom" option. The review text says it's as granular as a minute.
- Actions or programs that run before and after a backup, and when a drive is inserted.
- A detailed log of every operation.
The reviewer also lists network locations, WebDAV and FTP/FTPS/SFTP as supported destinations.
The cloud-to-cloud trick
Jacobi calls this the product's best feature. Many backup programs only upload to a cloud service and restore from it. Handy Backup lets a cloud service be the source as well. He synced a folder from Dropbox to OneDrive without trouble.
The review lists these supported services:
- Amazon S3 and S3-compatible storage
- OneDrive for Business
- Dropbox for Business
- Yandex Disk
- Mail.ru Hotbox and Icebox
- VK Cloud
- Backblaze
- Box
- 4Shared, which sits oddly under "Sources/Other" instead of "Sources/Cloud"
Google Drive is the exception. The program wouldn't connect to it online even after a successful login. The review lists Google Drive as "local only", meaning you'd install the Google Drive desktop client and back up its synced folder. The reviewer says every other service he tried connected. He also says the bug survived into 8.7 even though he reported it about 18 months earlier. He says the vendor told him it was working with Google on a fix.
The administrator problem
Imaging has to run as Administrator, but the installer doesn't set that up. The review describes a permanent fix:
- Right-click the Handy Backup desktop icon and choose Properties.
- Choose Open file location.
- Right-click HandyBackup8.exe and open Properties.
- On the Compatibility tab, tick "Run this program as administrator".
Ticking the box on the desktop shortcut alone didn't work for the reviewer. The program does have a "Restart with Admin privileges" menu option, so the vendor knows about the issue. That's a one-time fix, but imaging jobs may fail without it.
Imaging: odd layout, bloated images
The review has several complaints about disk imaging:
- Unusual layout. You don't pick an image backup directly. You start defining a backup, then choose Disk Clone or System Recovery from the source list. Then you choose Disk Image or System Recovery. The reviewer says Disk Image and a System Recovery image are the same thing.
- Easy to select twice. If you pick a drive at the top level, the program images both the whole drive and its individual partitions. Drill down a level to choose either the drive or the partitions.
- Hard-to-read drive labels. The reviewer found logical drive letters hard to spot.
- No option to skip empty sectors. Images come out close to the full capacity of the disk or partition. The reviewer says most competitors offer this option and default to it. He tested on a 1.8 TB drive with roughly 300 MB of operating system data, and the backup took much longer than with most programs.
- No space warning. The job failed with an error because the destination lacked room. The program hadn't warned him at the start.
One bright spot: the reviewer says the vendor has fixed the System Recovery plug-in since his last look.
Other irritations
- Slow cancellation. Stopping a backup was frustratingly slow. He accepts caution during a restore, but not during a backup, where cancelling can't damage anything.
- Restore warning missing. The program doesn't tell you that the drive being restored from an image is unusable until the restore finishes.
- Recovery media. A recovery disc is available. However, the File menu's Create Recovery Drive command only points you to instructions for downloading an .iso file. You then write the .iso to a boot drive with Rufus or a similar tool.
- Interface. He says it looks designed by programmers and takes more acclimating than ideal.
Pricing and competition
The review gives these prices at the time it was written:
| Edition | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $39 | File-only |
| Professional | $89 | Adds imaging |
| Small Business | $249 | Backs up business software and databases |
| Server | $487 | Adds Linux and remote management |
There is no free edition any more, but there is a 30-day trial. The vendor says the trial installer is common to all editions, and you buy a registration key to unlock the edition you want. Treat the prices as review-time figures and check the vendor before buying.
On value, Jacobi names Acronis True Image, Easeus ToDo Backup and Aomei Backupper as competitors at similar or lower prices. He also mentions free options, Macrium Reflect and Windows File History.
Has anything been fixed since?
The vendor keeps releasing updates. The 8.7.4 build is dated September 29, 2026, with a release note dated October 5, 2026 headed "Fixes for Program Settings". Version 8.7.0 was built on May 7, 2026. It included fixes for restore and encryption scenarios, plus an updated French localization.
None of those release notes, as far as the search results show, mention fixes for the Google Drive connection, the missing empty-sector option or slow cancellation. I can't say whether any of those problems have been fixed. Jacobi's findings come from his own hands-on testing of 8.7, not from a retest of the newest build.
Verdict
Jacobi's conclusion is that Handy Backup would have earned an extra star if it were glitch-free and easier to learn. He still says "take a look", because file backup and sync are top-notch. My own view, from general industry knowledge, is that the free trial is the safest way to test this. Run a trial backup of the cloud services you actually use. Then run a test image and restore on a spare disk before trusting it with anything important. If you rely on Google Drive as a source, the unresolved connection bug may rule it out.