A separate app is better in my opinion. Requires maintenance, though.
Bottom line: few people back up and then panic when their harddrive crashes.
LOL...truth!
Acronis is nice because it's an image of your entire drive. If you should have a failure you can duplicate it on another new drive in about an hour or so.
That includes the OS, all progarams and files....just like it never happened!
I'd swear by it, very inexpensive too: Acronis software- Google