I'll second ghost if you want a complete backup of your drive, but if you just want to back up data directories, Nero is the way to go.
If you want to use Ghost, you'll actually want to reformat and get your drive in the most stable form you can, i.e. all drivers, updates, program updates installed. files/folders set the way you want, but with only minimal programs installed. Then that way, if you ever have a system failure you can ghost your drive to that former state and just re-install the games/programs that weren't on your HDD during the ghost image.
Just my .02