Best Ghost program for Windows

[Ardesco]

I would suggest trying:

http://www.partimage.org

Does the job as well as ghost

[Clippy]

Bookmarked from a recent article regarding this topic:

Macrium Reflect

[worzelGummidge]

Acronis is a good product. It has got me out of a pickle a few times.
You can use it to image a hard disk onto external (USB disk, DVD (if small enough) or internal media (2nd disk).
You can also create a bootable CD which you can use to boot up your PC and copy your disk onto another new disk if you have a hard disk failure.
You can also create a small image onto your boot disk for but of course if you loose your boot disk then you loose the bootable image.

It could deal with being a little simpler by not having so many other things that you can do.

I have used Ghost but could not get on with it very easily.
Anyway Acronis works for me and it has worked in my hour of need (hard disk failure on laptop & main PC).
You do tend to find though that if you do use this product then you also have to purchase at least one additional USB disk but I guess it all comes down to time and money.

Do you spend a a little time and money prior to loosing your disk or lots of time and money after your main disk has failed.

People only tend to loos a hard disk once without a proper backup and then they get organised after the event. It's best to get organised BEFORE the event if possible.