As was mentioned above, Macrium Reflect is a superb product for doing both (a) system image backups, and (b) data folder/file backups if you pay a little money and get the non-free version. It's well worth it. Not only does the paid version support folder/file backups, but it also supports "retention policy" to automatically "prune" older generations of the backup files as newer ones are created.
And establishing a proper backup scheme for your situation and needs is critical, if you will "cry" if you lose irreplaceable data on your machine.
In my own case, I have two machines, one of which is my HTPC. Because of how Windows Media Center and DRM works, the decryption key needed to play back recordings of "copy protected" cable channel programs is a forward-moving time-based key which is tied directly to the installed operating system itself. So if you have to restore a system image from some time in the past, it becomes impossible to decrypt any copy-protected programs recorded between that system image and right now. So you've "lost them" as far as being able to watch those programs, if you do have to do a restore.
Bottom line, to reduce my exposure risk of possibly losing the ability to watch something I recorded in the past few days but haven't gotten around to watching yet, on my HTPC I have Macrium Reflect scheduled to take a system image twice a week, with a "retention policy" of 8 generations. That means when a new system image is created the 9th oldest version is automatically deleted. So I never have more than 8 generations (i.e. 4 weeks) of system image to recover from, and this is maintained automatically by Macrium Reflect.
On my other machine, I just take a weekly system image, and have a "retention policy" of 4 generations.
For data folder/files, I have scheduled a "monthly FULL" backup (i.e. of all appropriate folders/files on the various partitions of my four hard drives). Then each day I also take a "daily INCREMENTAL" backup (which backs up only what's changed in since the last FULL or INCREMENTAL backup). The whole combination of FULL+INCREMENTAL backups is considered a "set", and Macrium Reflect can be requested to recover any folder/file from whatever "set" contains the most recent version (since you can have multiple months of these "sets" available, based on your "retention policy"). Or, you can even request recovery of an OLDER version than the most recent, say if you have corrupted a member and only discovered it recently, and you want to go back and recover an earlier version which had not yet been corrupted.
Again, data folder/files in "backup sets" (for me monthly FULL plus daily INCREMENTAL) are retained for 4 months as my "retention policy". This allows me to recover any file I have created or updated that existed on my machine on any day of the past 4 months as long as it was physically present when the backup job ran on that day. Beyond that, if I wanted to retain say a 6-month or annual backup I'd just delete all of the daily INCREMENTAL backups of that set, keeping the older monthly FULL. That way at least I might be able to recover something from last year if I had to, if I was lucky enough to have it on some old monthly FULL backup that I still retained.
Despite this "insurance policy" setup I've created to protect me because I have lots of data that I simply cannot afford to lose, i.e. the combination of weekly or semi-weekly system image backups (to protect me from Windows-related issues), coupled with monthly FULL and daily INCREMENTAL data folder/file backups (to guarantee 100% secure data), I've only very rarely ever really needed to restore a system image (although that does happen on very rare occasions). Even recovering data folder/files only happens occasionally. But just having all of this protection set up... JUST IN CASE YOU NEED IT, so that you don't "cry" when you lose something... it's worth the effort.
Both machines have a 2TB external USB 3.0 drive that I do my image and data backups to. All happens automatically with Macrium Reflect Standard. For convenience and organization I've set up separate target backup folders on the external drive with names corresponding to the hard drive partitions for the data backups, and also a separate folder for the system images. I also take special manual "on request" backups of some very large databases that rarely change, say every 3-6 months or so. They go into the proper target hard drive folder for the drive on which the databases are located.
I also take monthly DAT tape backups (using Novastor's NovaBackup as a second data folder/file backup product) as my "secondary failsafe" method, to cover myself in case the USB hard drive should fail. Yes, I'm a bit obsessive about this, but my data is critical. I'd hate to lose my primary backup and have no fallback Plan B. For me, that's tape.
Consider it. Up to you how carried away you want to get, depending on how important the data you have is to you, and how hard it would be to reconstruct your system from a loss or unexpected disaster or hardware failure.
