Go grab easeus todo backup its free & start making system images,it'd pay to make two copies & place 1 on a backup drive & the other on a different drive,its a lot faster than using restore discs to get machine back to where it was best of all the last image you make (i make 3 that i keep permanently at differing intervals of install the 1st being fresh with minimal 3rd party stuff added) will be of a fully updated OS including all software,from this point you just make daily or weekly or monthly throw away backups but always keeping most recent image as space becomes low

edit: yes you use them to recover an infected comp or a hardware failure of hdd