Go Back Or Ghost Or Acronic True Image Or ?

solution to a System Restore that will no longer do so on my pooter a two year old XP Home sp2. Used to, doesn't now and used so rarely don't know what might have caused the problem. I was able to complete "cured" the problem-still no Sys Restore.
So began to try a different approach to recover in time of problem. But have become confused about which is the better approach. Something like Go Back or something like Ghost or Acronis True Image. I am not locked into any of those-but they seem to be most often mentioned.