I'm a big fan of cloning when installing a new boot drive. I hook up the new drive as a secondary drive, clone the first to the second, then replace the first with the second. I don't use cloning to perform a backup.
Imaging is useful too but I don't make images as often as you seem to. Periodic images are useful, then in between I do data file backups. I never rely on the mfr's recovery disks or partitions for recovery but make sure I have a fairly recent image that I can use to restore my system.