Acronis True Image is better reviewed everywhere I've seen than Norton and is the one I use.
You get or can make a bootable CD to run it from in the event of total disk wipeout.
The way I used it was to reload XP clean, then add all the programs I use and set them up the way I like them on C:. I used D: for all the data, email storage and other stuff that changes.
Then did an Acronis backup of C: to my second hard drive, and also to my external hard disk. This means that a clean windows install, plus all the programs set to my preferences is just 8 minutes away rather than two days. OK, you may need to update Windows and your virus checker, but that's easy.
You can also do "incremental " updates, which backup only the stuff that's changed. But I find I install so much rubbish that a clean XP install is just the job quite regularly.
Data, kept separately, can be backed up as often as you like and is unaffected by the system backup of disk C:.
So I'd go with Acronis, however you want to use it.