Best Practices

Best practice would be to build a master image from vendor OEM.

If you have to add any extra drivers time by time, you can use WSUS or like.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd320282

See link:

http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/windows-7-image-process-for-the-college-s-classrooms

We create a base image (Windows 7 with only the network card driver installed)  If you are absolutely sure of a change you want to apply to all machines in your environement now is the time to make the change. Example would be registry edits and the like.  Then we load that image into SCCM 2007 (soon to be converted to 2012) and create task sequences for the different PC models we have and what drivers to load. (drivers are also loaded into SCCM).  We have loaded most of our software and freeware into SCCM so it`s easy to add or remove them when deploying future clients.

Hope this helps.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee523212(v=ws.10)

This technet article goes through creating standard images and automating the image deployment via MDT.