When you install an operating system or you have formatted your hard drive and you have things exactly the way you want why not image your hard drive.
An “image” is an exact copy of your hard drive that you can use to restore your computer if things go wrong.
You could also take an image of your hard drive on a regular basis as a way of backing up.
Remember if you take an image of your hard drive you can then restore it to the exact state when you took the ” image”
There are a couple of free solutions for this:
Windows 7 also allows you to do this.