That's a total bummer, I've been there a couple of times and know what your going through,
even after a few days you never get back some of the stuff you had on, all you can do is put the essentials on then add the other bits a little each day!!
Then I discovered Ghost and will never part with it, every so often I backup my HDD image (about 30mns) it's automated so no need to attend, if your drive dies just put the new one in, doesn't matter the size, will return it to the last image, formatted, partitioned etc, all restored in 30mns!
Edit: Posted same time CaptainHaplo, you said the key word "image"!