I used backup programs for a while but, like you had trouble finding files. And usually when I wanted to recover something I had changed the backup program and could not read them anyway.
Nowadays I just have 2 big drives, the first is partitioned for Windows and data.
All data goes in the second disk and critical stuff gets copied onto the data partition on drive 1. The Windows partition gets cloned onto the second disk whenever I remember to do it.
This way I don't need a backup program because all the files are in their original format and, even if one disk dies, I've got the critical stuff on the other.