HD Copy Software.

I like Norton Ghost to image the hard drive over to another hard drive. Norton Ghost has been used for years now. I haven't had one issue with using this program.

http://www.symantec.com/norton/ghost

He's right, ghost is the best.  I use it all the time.

Here is an easy to follow guide on how to setup:

https://forums.symantec.com/syment/board/message?board.id=109&message.id=6263

Ghost 9 is create-os independent, but was limited to hardware range to be used, Ghost10 and above as fur as I know, is OS base, which is suck.
If Ghost 9 could support wider range of hardware, I would not need anything else.
Do instolatiaion from "bare metal" can be easy achive with windows server RIS option
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842564/en-us?spid=3198&sid=1494
, where you can actually prestage OS- deleting Security Identifier (SID), and preconfig OS with soft.

I have used ghost. I very much prefer Acronis. the Workstation version is cheap and comes with a fully working trial version for 30 days ...I think.

www.acronis.com

They all good soft, I gree, but I just dont like the fact of OS dependency.

Acronis is not OS dependent. You can run it from a Acronis boot disk that you create from the included software.

Is that means , it will care less what OS on it, and will it support all/most hardware? Why there is diffrent soft for diffrent OS?
Interesting , never knew that, always was thinking it is all OS attached, for licensing and making you buy more soft, some server supported soft I remember was close to $1000.

Server is a different product, yes. The workstation version for $79 plus Universal Restore upgrade for approx $10 works for most.

So for each PC- separate soft install.- makes not really useful.
And, if you have 10 win2003 servers it will run about $8000  - crazy.......
That what is beauty about Ghost 9  - totally OS independent, start before OS, and will copy HD, regardless OS, only problem was with USB supports, but was able find once usb DVD  R compatible with and did allow me practically copy any HD with any OS, on most PC, with only single copy of soft.

But then they probably relize "mistake" and all other version start been OS attached.

after creating DVD with ghost 9 - restore back no more than 20 min with avarage 10GB.

Ultimate Boot CD... it's free and it works for me. The one tedius part is having to slipstream your i386 and any proprietary drivers you'd like to include. Once you do that it spits out an .iso and you're good to go. http://www.ubcd4win.com/ . There is also a ubcd for unix type systems.

Does ghost image the HD as a bootable drive? Also does it allow the expantion of the partion if the new HD is larger?

Yes , and for ghost to work , hardware cannot be changed- which is one of the downside.

Acronis (EzMigration) allows for expantion of partion and seems very easy to use along with making a bootabel clone. Does anyone agree with this?

Acronis is awesome that what I use very user friendly in every way

I had a drive was tryign to recover with every other HD recvoery tool it let me ghost even after I had erase the boot sector it recovered every bit of data