Cloning / Image Software Bootable from USB

[THRobinson]

I haven't created an image in probably 12yrs... so not sure what's the best options anymore. I used Norton Ghost and I think it may have been Win98SE, burnt to disc.

I'm building a new system that will have a 250GB SSD primary and 1TB HDD secondary drive. I plan to install Win7x64 SP1 and updates, Adobe CS6 (Illustrator/Photoshop/Indesign/Dreamweaver) Office (Word/Excel) and a few small apps, drivers and such, and ideally I would like to buy a USB3.0 stick big enough to hold it all and create an image to the thumb drive. Also have the thumb drive bootable for restore so I don't need any kinda of boot disc.

I don't know how big it will be yet, but, my current computer has a 250GB HDD in it and I'll practice making the image on it to figure out how to do it and how big a USB stick I'll need... I'll just create the image file to the external drive I have for now.

Anyways...question is
1) Best program to use
2) Can I create a bootable image to a USB thumb drive/stick
3) Any good links to a walk through

Been Googling, mostly seeing the Win7 backup utility, but requires booting from the install CD first then restoring from USB. I'm looking for a simple stick the USB in, boot direct from USB, yes/no to restore and walk away.

 

[vesp3r]

Norton Ghost... I also use Seagate DiskWizzard on some computers.
Yes you can create bootable image (iso) and put it on a usb drive using Novicorp wintoflash
I dont think you will need image guide to make it. its quite easy nowadays

 

[THRobinson]

So Ghost is still around... saw a few posts about it not working from USB because of DOS and such. Though I think they were talking about Ghost 2003, which is what I used and well, 12yrs old now.

Saw some mentions of Clonezilla as well which I'm looking at now.