Ask HN: How do you backup/restore/repair your windows machine?

As I'm now self employed rather than relying on the enterprise I feel the need to have a decent backup and recovery strategy for my business machines. I'm aware that Mac's probably have this covered and I can't see this being an issue with Linux ( can easily start from usb drive or cd etc ) but I'm a bit more confused from a home windows user perspective.

Most machines I've bought don't have a Windows disk, everything is pre-installed. I can't create a recovery disk as I don't have a cd/dvd burner and therefore I can't load from the disk I don't have ;-) Assuming I can at least get to the bios menu I suppose there is a recovery option and I can repair using a disk image which I can store on an external hard drive or usb. Am I thinking along the correct lines.

Obviously data will be stored on external locations and probably cloud as well.