Disk cloning Software recommendation

[Spazzfish]

Hi peeps.
I want to clone my current c: boot drive onto an external usb drive, yank out the c: drive and replace it with a ssd then clone back across from the external drive.
I haven't done this in years. I used to use something called norton ghost booted off floppy. I was wondering if people could recommend some good software that works well that I can use to get the job done. I'm not so interested in the expensive stuff that allows you to do fancy backups. Just want to do a disk clone this once for now and maybe again a little later down the line. I'm running windows 7. I've seen talk of Acronis, but it seems a bit over the top for my needs and can be a bit unreliable (from what i've read).
Thanks

 

[Spazzfish]

Hi thanks for the input people. I'm trying the free option first the windows 7 backup. What confuses me with this is it wants to back up two of my three hard drives saying they are both needed for windows to run.
Now erm windows is wrong because it doesn't, my d drive has my game installs on it that's all. Is there anyway I can use this windows back to just clone drive c?

 

[Spazzfish]

I used The full version of acronis 2010 to to a disk clone from big partition onto a smaller one (just make sure that the actual files will fit)

I've also used Ghost on a Barts CD to do the same.

Bear in mind that all the imaging programs atm mess up partition alignment on SSD's and you'll need to fix this manually.

Ok thanks that information is helpful
Looks like i'm going the Acronis route. Amazon have it on sale at the moment and the other options are not quite working as i'd like.
How would you amend the partition alignment?