i have cloned many HD using ghost before and I am quite confident with teh latest version of ghost. Never fail me. No problem booting-up. No HW conflict.
This is VERY variable and depends on how much stuff you have running or are loading up. Firewalls, Antivirus, IIS servers, IM clients, etc etc etc... mine only has 300MB available (out of 1GB), but i run a lot of stuff.
