I have a business laptop with safeboot encryption meaning I have to enter a username/password before the OS can boot. This would also mean that I can't boot to a windows recovery disk to tell windows to recover to a System Image if I'm not mistaken. If this is true then the rest of my question will be somewhat void UNLESS I can convince the folks to unencrypt my drive for a day while I build my image and recreate on the new drive.

What I am trying to FIGURE out if a System Image will allow me to backup my current setup on a 80 GB HD to a 250 GB HD. Trying to make restoring my OS as painless as possible as I've honestly gotten EVERYTHING the way I want it.

I do see this http://www.clonezilla.org/ which to be honest I've NEVER used before. I've used Ghost and could go that route but this would still require I believe booting to a CD which with the environment/encryption I can't do currently.

Let me know your thoughts please. You can store a disc image on any medium (cd, dvd, hd, removable hd) and restore from that medium. I've never used Clonezilla but I've been using Acronis True Image for a long time.Without the password for the image you are basically screwed and are looking at doing a clean install...