To clone or not to clone

I have Acronis 2012 Home edition on a work computer that has 2 programs which required expensive custom setups. I need to create a backup of my hard drive so that I will not need to pay to have these programs reinstalled and set up again should my hard drive fail. As a total novice, the various choices are confusing. I was told by a member of the Geek Squad that cloning is the only way to ensure that all settings, configurations, and security codes needed for a seamless recovery will be saved. I have no idea if this is true. I do have two issues with cloning, 1st, I cannot get past selecting source and destination drives. The Acronis Cloning program offers me 3 drive selections, Primary master, primary slave, and the external hard drive I want to use as the back up. I select the primary master hard drive on my computer as the source, but as soon as I try to select a destination drive Acronis automatically deselects my source drive choice and makes it my destination choice. I cannot get past this. 2nd, while searching for answers on the Acronis website I came across a posting which warns of the real possibility that cloning will fail, and the source drive is trashed. Before risking a hard drive failure I need to make sure there are no alternatives. I have not been able to find a way to get thru to Acronis Tech support, which I find extremely irritating. Any help will be greatly appreciated.