I currently use (WHS) Windows Home Server (32-bit) edition to take care of all my pc backups - as well as storing photos, etc.
I have it installed on a home built Core Duo computer with 2 x 1.5Tb drives in it, and it is set to systematically back up all computers on my home network (mine, kids, wife laptop etc), between 9:00am and 9:00pm each day. If a computer is in sleep mode, it will even wake it up, do a backup and once finished put the computer back into sleep mode. The process once set up is pretty much done in the background.
One of my computers had a hard drive failure recently, so much so that I was never going to get any files off it. All I had to do was buy a new hard drive (got one from a local computer market - 500Gb for $40) put it into the computer, booted it up with a WHS recovery disc, and selected the most recent backup from the menu, and 45 minutes later it was fully restored. Didn’t need to re-install a thing!
