I use a combination of three strategies:
1)Burn media files like movies and music to DVDs.
2)RAID 1 your data drive.
3)Use drive image to backup your OS installations.
You should be thinking about having a disk partitioning scheme that supports this. A "Data drive" which is RAID 1, a "getting written to DVD" drive, and a FAT32 drive to write your OS images to.
Think sensibly and realistically about what you use your machine for and design its partitioning scheme around that, because it will be easier to backup if you do so.