I do the same as JackDaniel's, many ex' HDD's and DVD back ups. And long over due am starting to look into
nortons ghost product, advanced backup and recovery.
Burn an ISO disk image of the hole HDD and copy to a DVD(s) or ex HDD. In the case of loss of data or system failure, use the iso copy to replace lost date or get your system going again. But is is only as good as the last time you made a backup copy. And it is pucken nortons, but can not find anything else as good at this time.