I was going to recommend Acronis, but then I read your last paragraph

Actually, I'm still going to recommend Acronis, at least v11. It allows you to create multiple backup jobs as image or file-based. You can also mount images and restore selectively from them, so I really don't see a downside.

I had to replace a failing hard drive on my ThinkPad T60 (watch out for those Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB drives, I predict they'll be dropping like flies on ThinkPads due to excessive head-park cycling). Acronis backed me up to both network storage and DVD as a belt-and-suspenders approach, and allowed me to restore to the new drive without first installing Windows or even formatting it; I simply booted off the Acronis CD, selected the backup off the network share, and left it alone for 4 hours (no GigE in the PorkRind household yet ).