Restoring from ghost image question

Here's one for those that use norton ghost....do you format before you restore from a ghost image or is it fairly safe & clean to just restore from the image with no reformat? I have always reformatted before a clean install but am rather new to ghost and am not sure if norton reformats as it's restoring? Along the same lines, do you reformat using the windows xp/2000 install disk? It always wants to kick immediatly into setup after a format. Is it okay to shut off the computer as soon as the format is complete then reboot into ghost.exe?
Are there any 3rd party utilities that allow you to format NTFS? Thanks in advance!

I have just installed the image directly overtop of the existing drive.

Yup, just drop the Image onto the HD, no formatting required. If the Image wasn't NTFS, just reformat the HD to NTFS in Device Manager.