New to Backup

Hey!
So after many hard drive changes and repairs I've lost a fair share of data. I decided to make a backup so some questions popped up and I'd be really grateful if you could help me out:
-What software should I use? I'm thinking of saving it to a USB or some cloud technology. Related question- how big is the backup going to be? Does it archive it so it takes less space?
Thinking of backing up files(movies, music,etc), where I guess most backup software can do the trick, but also a backup of all the software that I've installed on the system.
If I were to say move to a different PC just load the backup and install everything from there, how would I go about that?
I know for a fact a program like that exists (or at least I think I do lol), had it saved a while back but can't find it now. By what I remember it made an image and then I guess you can run it sorta like ninite? Idk
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you. :]