I've asked before but never got an answer. What makes you think that writing the image first would be safer? I keep pointing out that whatever happened during that disk-to-disk clone would be just as likely to happen during a disk-to-image backup since the process is exactly the same.
Ok... I'll post it again...
The way the cloning software works, is when you do a disk-to-disk, is it moves the boot sector/partition/info/etc. over to the new disk right away. Thus, it is removed from the original drive, and put on the new drive.
Now, if something goes wrong during the clone (like what happened to me - something errored out and the clone wouldn't continue - can't remember what it was at the moment - either way, the entire clone wasn't finished). So, I decided to restart, but tried to boot into Windows first off of the original drive - no dice. Wouldn't boot into Windows because the bootloader was moved. Even with both drives in, and the bootloader on the new drive. Tried booting off of the new drive - and guess what? No boot! So, I decided, "well hey, I have a Win7 disc, I'll just write the bootloader/sector back to the original drive!" Which I figured would work... but for some reason it wasn't working. Tried everything I could think of, and googled extensively. Eventually, after rebuilding the bootloader several times through bcdedit, messing with GUID's and such... I finally got it to boot. However, somehow during this the boot drive letter also got changed, so I had to dive into the registry to change this back - took several hours for all of this. Now, you may be asking yourself "why didn't you just reformat and reinstall Windows?" Because he had software installed that he didn't have install discs for anymore that was licensed and such.
Disk-To-Image it does NOT remove this information, but only READS it and saves it to the image, leaving the source drive UNTOUCHED.
Now, this is how CloneZilla works - I don't know if Ghost works this way, nor Acronis. However, I use CloneZilla because it's free, and has advanced settings that I use from time-to-time.
Now you see why I suggest using Disk-To-Image? Because if something goes wrong, and the boot info is moved, you could be stuck between a rock and a hard place in trying to rebuild the boot info / get Windows back up and running. Essentially. LESS RISK INVOLVED.