i've developed a habbit of some sort of wanting to secure format and reinstall windows alot, like almost once a month, i got drive image 2002 and i clone my partition and try to use that, but after a couple months if i use it i would have to update programs and so i'll usually wind up formatting, reinstalling and update everything then clone it, and the process repeats, i'm tired of doing it but cant stop, its the only way i feel my hard drive is completely clean and updated and better performing...i wondered if anyone else has this problem or does this just make good security practice even though i'm the only user.
 
i tend to install and uninstall alot of programs plus i video edit which means i wind up deleting alot of large files and tend to make windowsxp somewhat slower, i shred all my deleted data using system shield and other cleaning utilities and defrag often which is good housekeeping but i always wind up secure formatting and reinstalling windows and i hate it. but in my mind i feel my hard drive is cleaner...is using a drive clone program and system shield afterwards make my drive just as clean?
is drive image 2002 as good as any other drive cloneing prog?
if not which is best and why