One of the technologies that I've been working with recently is IBM's Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore. Another of IBM's ThinkVantage technologies, this is provided free of charge with an IBM PC (and can can be licensed for other OEM's PC models).
In essence, Rescue and Recovery writes a backup of the entire PC hard disk to either a hidden partition on the local hard drive, a second hard disk, recordable media, network drive, or to a USB device. The first backup is a base image, then subsequent backups are differential. Backups can be scheduled and up to 31 backups can be stored before overwriting. In a recovery scenario, the process is simply booting from a rescue CD, which is easily generated and is not machine specific, or pressing the Access IBM button on selected IBM PCs, then selecting the backup to use and the file(s) to be recovered. Individual files, or the entire system, may be recovered, even preserving selected data and logon credentials written since the last backup.
All configuration settings are stored in an easily edited text file with full product documentation including customisation available in PDF format.