There's a lot of programs that will let you schedule a backup of certain files/folders at certain times of the day/week/month, which is basically what System Restore does.
Not many are free, and it's best to do a lot of research before you choose. I currently use NovaBackup in place of System Restore. It allows me to set up different "jobs", which for me are:
1: Backup my Windows XP partition to external HD
2: Backup my Windows Vista partition to external HD
These are both set for different days of the week, and at different times. The program starts the backup for me, and also comes with a basic Anti-virus included which scans all your files while they are being backed up.
The best part of the program is it's ability to "restore" all or parts of any backup job.
Say I accidentally deleted a system file on my vista partition and couldn't get it to boot. All I have to do is log onto my XP partition, load the Vista backup, and copy the required file back where I deleted it from and reboot.
It's not free, but what you pay depends on what you need.