I recently had to reformat my hard drive and it was a pain to say the least to go back and re-install two and a half years of software and settings. Is there a good software out there to back up the entire hard drive, including all hidden folders and files, so that my backup is an exact copy of my existing hard drive?

Paragon http://www.drive-backup.com/?google
Acronis True Image http://www.acronis.com
BootIt http://www.terabyteunlimited.com
Norton Ghost http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/
Drive Image 7.0 from Power Quest http://www.powerquest.com/driveimage/

Probably plenty of others as well.