I've been a PC service tech for somewhere around 30 years and the most disheartening call I ever get is from the person whose HD just went up in smoke and they have NO backup for anything. Drivers? NO!,,, OS install disk? NO! Backup of docs and pictures? NO!
At that point I usually suggest that they go to WalMart of somewhere and pick up a new computer. There is NO data recovery program that can get data off of a HD where the read/write heads have crashed into the platters and dug deep grooves in the platter surfaces.
That scenario is ever on my mind when I advise someone in regards to setting up a meaningful backup scheme.
First off the backup/restore program should NOT be on your C: drive. It should be on a bootable CD, DVD or Flash Drive, whatever works best on your system.
Likewise, the backup should be a total backup image of the OS drive, which is most commonly drive C.
That will include the boot sector, the OS, all the drivers and all the programs and data (EVERYTHING).
Then finally, the backup image file should be (must be) stored on a separate hard drive or on DVD's, for restoring to a brand new hard drive.
Always assume the worse case scenario when devising your own backup system.
Now, on my own PC, I use Ghost 2003 or Ghost 11.5 which I can boot up my system with, from either a floppy disk (Ghost 2003) or a CD or Flash Drive (Ghost 11.5---too big to fit on a floppy disk).
From that boot disk, I can access my hard drive, to delete any junk files I want to eliminate before I do my backup. My XP drive is still in FAT-32 format, so I can access it directly from my DOS boot disk, and run batch files to delete all the junk off of the HD.
On my Windows 7 HD, I still boot into DOS and then run NTFS4DOS to allow me to access the HD and delete the junk, before doing the backup.
My backups are made either to a second (or third) HD in my system or they are burned to DVD's for OFF-Site storage. The only really SAFE backup is the one that's NOT in your system when it gets hit by lightning.
Or anywhere in your house, while it's burning down. I wonder how much data has been lost forever, for the poor people in California, whose houses have burned down in those wild fires?
Over the years, I've had as many HD failures as anyone, at least till I learned how to keep my drives COOL, but in all that mayhem, I've never lost the first data file. OS's and PC's come and go, but data (docs and pictures) live forever.