Windows 7 Reformat and Image process?

I've always been partial to taking an image once I've done a clean install / installed drivers / run Windows Update / installed common software and I'm sure everything is running smooth. This way if you have a catastrophe, it's a 20 min fix to get back to that point. This is a common approach for IT departments. They make a standard image for whatever model computer they are using. Of course they will likely have several models of computer if it's a large company.

Depending on what you use to take the image, depends on what you need. It's always nice to have a Windows repair disk. Obviously you want to have install media as well. If you use Windows Backup, then you need the Windows repair disk to restore the image. If you use something like Norton Ghost, Acronis, or ToDo Backup, then it will have you make some sort of boot media so you can restore the image made with their software.

Windows Backup is OK, but it is missing at least one critical feature. As far as I know, there is no way to verify the image once it's made. I've run into this with Norton Ghost. The company I worked for used Ghost to quickly restore their field computers to a default image. We had one for each model of computer in the company along with images that were tailored to the computers use. I had to restore a ToughBook and I had all the images on a portable HDD. It was the first time that I'd had to re-image this particular model of ToughBook and I was stunned to find that the image I had was corrupted. I called the IT department and they uploaded the image to me, it took some time, and after wasting that time, I discovered the source of the corruption wasn't my copy of the image, it was the main image for that system. So had someone taken the time to check the image after they made it with the built in function of Ghost, lost time could have been avoided.

There are many good backup / imaging software packages out there. I like the three listed above. My favorite is probably split between Ghost and Acronis True Image. I like ToDo Backup as well, it's just not as polished. Windows Backup is OK, but it's pretty sparse and like I said, no verify that I've found.