Need candid response regarding Migrate Easy

I am looking to clone my 250 GB harddrive in order to transfer all Data, all Operating Systems, and all Programs, and WITHOUT ever needing to use the original Operating System CD's or Program CD's to do so. I need the cloned (destination) drive will work just as if it was the original (source) drive. Which program will do a much better job of this: Acronis Migrate Easy or Norton Ghost?

 

For what it's worth, and having only very limited experience, I have just done just this procedure.

Had a failing 80Gb drive.
Normally I dont mind spending a day reinstalling my Os and apps, but I have one older "office management" app which is a very complicated reinstall that requires a lot of resetting and rejigging.

So, with some trepidation, used Ghost for the first time.
Backed up all data to external USB drive files first. Scanned for all malwares that I could, fixed all registry settings and used check disc etc.

Tried "Copy drive" first and got stuck. Bugger!
Losing hope!

Then went to Image application and was able to recreate whole set up!
Worked straight off. Yahoo!!

Only problem, and possibly related to my inexperience: transferred across to 250G drive and Ghost created 80g partition for 'new" image. I possibly missed some setting in Ghost.

Therefore now have spare 170G partition. Should see me through for a while

AS I said this is my sum total experience and I am not an expert.
Was advised that all corruptions and malware that may be running would be moved across also, but very pleased with results to date.

I am sure there are many other users here who have more extensive experience.

Regards

 

I use lots of software custom configuring and to lose a hard drive means at least a week of reinstalling everything and lots of custom reconfiguring. Personally True Image is the only software I have found that will do the job for me. I do small backups of critical work from once a day to once a week depending on how much I can aford to lose and I use the True Image Clone feature to backup my hard drive once a month. With TI I can clone to a second identical drive but leave the original working afterwards, and the second drive is in a removable bay so when it's done I remove it and put it in a safe location. Other programs I have tried demand that I set the cloned drive as the active drive. I guess they do this because they assume the cloned drive is going to be swapped immediately, but that's not the way I use it.
I love doing it this way because if my drive dies all I do it plug in the cloned drive and I'm back up and running at exactly the same point where I did the clone, OS, Software, and Data. Then all I have to do is add the little incremental data backups and I'm back in busness.
Hope this helps,
David40