True Image made its name as a system backup tool. In the same way as Norton Ghost or PowerQuest's now defunct Drive Image, it can make a complete copy of everything on your hard drive. You can restore your system at a later date and it will be exactly as it was before.

Version 10 of the program goes beyond this, though, and adds file back-up to its existing system back-up features. This means you can choose the specific files or folders to copy and back-up just these to another hard drive - internal or external - or a CD or DVD, or another drive on a network. New to this version is the ability to back-up to an FTP site, so your data can easily be archived to another building.

To make file backups easier, True Image 10 offers likely categories, such as photos, video or music, and copies the contents of specified folders only. When you do this, it doesn't trouble you to specify particular files, but instead includes all the standard file types in its backup. For example, if you specify music, the program backs up MP3s, WAVs, WMAs and other standard music files. You can edit the filetypes from a comprehensive list, to tailor the back-up exactly to the files you're after.

The new version of True Image can also back up Outlook files, which include your contacts and to-do lists, as well as received and sent e-mail. Specific applications are also catered for; so, for example, you can save all the settings for Photoshop or Access. Most of the common applications are listed, though there are a few anomalies, such as the inclusion of Ulead's GIF animator but not PhotoImpact.

When you need to add a higher capacity hard drive to your PC, True Image can help here, too. It can automatically copy the contents of one drive to another, either as a secondary data drive or as a replacement for your boot drive. In the process it handles re-partitioning of both source and destination disks. So, for example, you could transfer two partitions from a 20GB to an 80GB hard drive and have the new device formatted with partitions taking up the same proportion of the new drive as on the old one.

The other main advance in True Image 10 Home is compatibility with Windows Vista, something we can't, as yet, test thoroughly. Since most current applications are expected to work with Vista as is, it may be more of a compatibility check than a new feature, but it's useful to know, anyway.

True Image 10 Home probably deserves the overused term 'solution' more than most applications. If you need to back-up almost anything on your PC, the program can accommodate you, but it can also migrate your data from an old drive to a new, bigger one in an ordered and easy-to-understand way.