@AST: First of all, I'd agree with Anupam on the registry cleaning and disk defragging. Also, don't bother using 2 defraggers, it's an overkill and they defrag in different ways.
As for the disk imaging: please read this article:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best...ng-program.htm
Unless you're the type that doesn't care about backups (which doesn't seem to be the case), you will find that drive imaging is an indispensable tool. Don't rely on one image too much though and always verify, because there can be corruption.