Proper reinstallation of catalog, settings and files after clean installing W7

Hi,
I'm clean installing windows 7 (I've had it with Vista) and would like to know what is the best procedure and the logistics involved for the transfer/restoration of my catalog.
I will have a large, clean secondary hard drive available (being formatted as we speak) to store anything needed before reformatting and installing W7 in my primary drive.
Here are the specifics:
I'm using PSE8
My photos (13,000 pics) are properly organized in folders inside the "Pictures" folder within my User using Vista's default folder structure and would like to preserve this same arrangement under W7 (basically restoring to the Pictures folder in W7.
I have only one Catalog and is only accesible only to me (as opposed to the "accesible to everyone" option).
I would also like to preserve my address book and preferences, but don't know where ae these files located.
My planned windows-related workflow is as follows (suggestions welcome):
1. Make a simple copy of C: dirve to the 2nd hard drive (about 400GB worth of stuff) just to have an accesible backup of all files.
2. Use the easy transfer wizard to transfer all windows user's settings and files (from all four users) to the 2nd drive.
and then use the wizard to restore everything after installing W7.
3. Do a backup of my PSE catalog using the backup feature of the Organizer. Recent second backup is safely stored off-site.
4. Do the same for my itunes library (research pending on the proper procedure).
5. Reformat hard drive and then clean-install W7.
6. Use easy tranfer wizard to restore files and settings.
7. Install all programs.
8. Restore PSE catalog using the restore feature in PSE.
9. manually copy back the address book and preferences to their proper folders... please tell me where these folders are going to be located
Questions:
What is the proper way to do the transfer my photos and Catalog file?
Should I use the PSE8 backup and restore?
If so, what will happen with the photos already restored by the Windows wizard? should I delete them and let the PSE restore procedure "legally" restore all my pictures and catalog file? This is my big question.
I will very much appreciate all your help and sujjestions with this procedure

can go for PSE back up and restore . It will work for your large catalogs and images

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    On a Unix system (which OS X sits on top of), deleted data has its file table entry removed. The only way then to find deleted data is to scour the entire drive for BOF (beginning of file) markers and reading the data of each one it finds to its EOF (end of file) marker.
    So be prepared to wait for hours for a search to complete. It could take more than a day for a terabyte or larger drive. It also doesn't help that recovered data rarely has any of the original names.
    Edit: Also, did you do a simple erase of the drive, or a zero write erase? If the latter, your chances of recovering anything is virtually nil.

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