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Strictly, you don't need to backup and restore the driveinfo.calibre and metadata.calibre files. They are helper files for calibre that will be recreated when calibre connects.
The driveinfo.calibre file contains an id that calibre can use and things like the timestamp of the last connection. The only thing I can think of that gets used in it is the id. The Kobo Utilities and Reader List plugins can use the id to identify the device. If you don't use either of these, or don't have any device specific configuration, then calibre generating a new id doesn't matter.
The metadata.calibre helps to connect the books on the library to those in the library. Calibre can do this each time, but there are some circumstances, that it will get this wrong. The main one for the Kobo devices are books with multiple authors. They tend not to be matched automatically, and you need to do the manual match in the device list. This is then stored in the metadata.calibre. Removing the file, means these are lost.
For what you are doing, I am not sure that keeping these files will help. As you sideload to the external SD card, there will be a metadata.calibre on the card. That will be used by calibre to match the books on the card. The metadata.calibre file in the main storage only has books that are in the main storage. And if you don't sideload books there, it will only have purchased books in the main storage and hence in this file. Part of the metadata.calibre is the path to the book on the device. For purchased books this is a id that Kobo generates. I have never bothered to look to see if this id is the same after a factory reset. So, the file might not actually match any books and be recreated during the first connection.
As to your steps, you don't really need to remove the external SD card when doing a factory reset. The device won't touch it until after the setup is finished. I usually plan to remove it, but nearly always forget. The reason I want to remove it is not because I don't want the books on it to be processed until I'm ready. If the card is in the device, they will be processed after the setup is finished and before the home screen is displayed the first time.
Other than that, I can't see a problem with the steps. But, I have to ask, why are you doing a factory reset? What problem are you trying to solve?
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