You use an image from time, when computer was working fine.
Sure, but from what I understood of Carbon's post, he meant - take an image, format the drive, restore the image.
Sorry if that's not the case.
Anyway, I still don't see the point of formatting and restoring like that. I take images myself as backups, so I can restore back if something goes wrong (I usually image before I install major sofwtare or make major hardware changes), but I don't see how regularly imaging and reformatting makes sense.
Guess this is half directed at patio as he did bring it up.