what disk imaging software do you propose to use?
the native software within Win7 won't handle the non-Windows partitions you earlier said you had. XP won't be able to directly address any images.
Most imaging software will have problems with the multiboot system. You'll have to use TrueImage or Ghost, and for recovery boot with their recovery boot media
And yes its best to reformat the drive before trying the recovery, but theres a gotcha. Sometimes the multiple partitions won't recover correctly to a single partition drive, so you have to recreate the original partitions during the formatting process of the same size