Disclaimer:  I've seen the demos but we don't have it running yet.  I know the theory though.

I've seen a full system restore from bare metal in 20 minutes.  Our Windows admins take a day or 2 to rebuild a server...and even then, they don't always get it right.

One of the key things to consider, though, is how important it is to get the server back to the exact same configuration it was before it died.  If it's important, and it probably should be, BMR is far more critical than a simple re-install.  Don't forget that not only do you have to re-install Windows, you'd have to apply all of the identical server paks you had on the system to begin within, all of the exact same versions and patches to the applications, identical drivers, identical registry settings, local user configurations, share configurations, and only then can you worry about the application data.  If you try the rebuild approach, the odds are almost 100% that what you end up with will not be the same as what you started with.  One missed setting and your application could crash, fail, or corrupt data.  You may not even partition the drives the same as what you had.