If you’re looking for an image backup tool right now then EASEUS Todo Backup 1.1 will get the job done quickly, easily, and for the very reasonable cost of nothing at all.

If you’re in no hurry, though, it may be worth waiting a month or two. EASEUS has just released the first public beta of Todo Backup 2.0, and it’s a major upgrade, packed with professional features, that will take the program to a whole new level.

You’re no longer restricted to creating hard drive images, for instance.  The program is also able to back up files, either by type (documents, emails, music, pictures, videos and so on), or any that you select directly.  Support for incremental backups improves performance, while a highly flexible scheduler can run your chosen backup jobs whenever you like.

Todo Backup 2.0 now creates bootable USB and CD/DVD recovery environments, that can restore the last backup if your hard drive becomes corrupted.

A new Universal Restore option helps you restore a backup to a different PC.

A Snapshot feature allows you to take a quick backup of your current system state, and restore it quickly and easily: it’s similar to a hard drive image, but faster and doesn’t require as much hard drive space.

An enhanced set of tools includes options to clone or wipe the partition or drive of your choice.

And this is all presented in a new, cleaner and simpler interface, which should ensure you’ll find all the new features with the minimum of hassle.

Put it all together, then, and Todo Backup 2.0 has an impressive list of capabilities that would cost you a significant amount of money elsewhere.   But for the moment, at least, you can try it out for free: just visit the Todo Backup 2.0 beta testing site to download your copy.  But hurry: this beta will expire on December 31st 2010.