New
#91
I keep user data on all my machines on separate partitions so that the OS/apps are own their own partitions. User data is continously backed up to other media, the OS/apps are only imaged after relatively significant changes. Because of this setup I sometimes go a full month without imaging. There's really no need to if I've only done OS/app updates. If I had added apps or made significant changes to OS/app settings I'll image more often.
That setup can help in determining the true effectiveness of these cleanup activities. In order to reduce the size of the images (and the time it takes) you'd want to get rid of all the temporary/dead files before making the image, but there have been times I've held off the cleaning for many months, on heavily used machines, just to see how effective the cleaning actually is. I'm often amazed at how tolerant the Windows OS's really have been.
If you refrain from installing apps willy nilly, don't allow installs via family members/guests, and treat your network/machines more like corporations handle their networks you'll find yourself much better off. Instead of spending time trying to recover from some mess, invest the time in researching the stuff you will install and I think you'll find it takes a lot less work/time to manage your systems. When you do install (or update) pay close attention to the process and make sure it proceeds like you expect it to and without the add-on useless "freeware" crap they sometimes try to get you to take. And apart from hardware failures you may find that you never need to revert to any of your saved images or doing any reinstalls.
Oh, one last thing: always know ahead of time how to undo what you just did. Otherwise you may find you'll have to learn to live with the consequences, regardless of how it turns out.
You can learn a lot if you have access to some expendable hardware.