There is one preventative measure that you could employ in this situation. The use of Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage would allow you to make an identical snapshot of the drive that you could restore in a pinch. You would set up a back schedule with regular imaging (also I usually image my initial installs of my computers that I set up at home). If the windows install goes bad then just restore the image that worked previously. This is system restore on steriods. This makes repairing a trashed computer much, much easier since you can avoid having to go through the hassle of a windows install. Only the size of the back up and drive is main determinant of the time it takes but usually a couple of hours depending on the setup.
This wiki article can explain disk cloning (imaging) better that I can :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_cloningYou will have to buy the more expensive server editions, I know for a fact that Acronis home will not install on a windows server. I do not know of any good open source (freeware) solutions.
I will point out that imaging the drive is not a very good "backup" solution but rather a hardware/software failure solution.
