Call me old fashioned, but data files should never be on the hard drive in the first place.
If HD crashes, you fix, then re-install the programs and you're back in business.
I agree, sort of. I have my hard drive partitioned. OS is on C and data is on D. Also, D is backed up frequently.
I like the 'imaging' to restore. When my laptop HD sort of went south, I bought a new har drive and ran the image restore. All of my programs and settings were copied exactly as they were before. Imaging and image restore takes about 45 minutes each, depending on the amount of content.
Image restore on both desktops and laptops have save me several times over the last decade.