After making a "clean install" image your OS then make about 3 more as you build up, like another image after the drivers, another image after the updates to the OS, put just the aplication software you find critcal(absolute). Should end up with 4 or 5image files hoping you have the extra drive for this. Then if you have problems you can allways go back to a image without having to reinstall all over again.like mentioned above, there may be updates of drivers to change in your image file and other programs to add.Also with 4 basic image files, if one is corrupt still have 3 more.
This is the way I doit and I know there are other opinions. The last computer I had I used my basic images for 5 years. I never ever did reinstall windows with a disc.
I made mistake there. i should say i never reinstalled windows from the windows disc. Besides keeping images on a second drive I also had the first 2 images on seperate DVD disc.