We had a long discussion about drive cloning on the Sevenforums (Windows 7 forum).  I didn't have any luck cloning a drive when I went from a smaller SSD to a larger SSD.  I bought a Samsung EVO840 500GB drive and tried the cloning using the supplied program with the Samsung SSD, Acronis  2012 and Macrium V5 (paid version).  The clone failed on each one when the new cloned drive was booted.  The closest I ever came was with Macrium cloning the drive for Win 8.1.  It booted up to the point of "creating desktop" but never got any further.  Other clones never even booted.    I finally "restored" a backup of the old SSD to the new SSD and that worked. 
 
One of our software "guru's" (a retired IBM software head) on the sevenforums did some testing with various clone programs and only had one clone that worked out of many.  Seems to be hit or miss. 
 
 
 
    

I cloned and replaced all my drives recently.  It went pretty well, I used Acronis.  I did have to re-registrar some plug-ins,  Spectronic's stuff (Omnisphere and Trilliun), but it went very quickly 'cause all my numbers where in the system and was a matter of hitting "enter".  A couple of libraries and 3rd party patches would not copy, (Ivory??) and I had to reload from the disk.  The Sonar stuff will go easy.  Some of the 3rd party libraries might require some work.     

Using True Image, you can reliably backup/restore drives.
The backup image file can be loaded onto a different drive (HD or SSD) essentially creating a clone.

Restoring images to the same PC works fine with Acronis 2014.

I've never tried restoring an operating system to a different PC. It may be capable but I won't believe it until I see it.

I don't think I will ever attempt it either. Generally a fresh install is best.

Doktor Avalanche
Restoring images to the same PC works fine with Acronis 2014.
I've never tried restoring an operating system to a different PC. It may be capable but I won't believe it until I see it.
I don't think I will ever attempt it either. Generally a fresh install is best.

You can prepare a backup image file specifically to load on a different hardware configuration.
In this case, I believe basic component drivers are stripped out (preventing potential BSOD).
That said, a clean install is absolutely the better option.
Clean install... then create a (new) up-to-date backup image file.

I know... But have you actually done it?
My perspective is anyway (as yours) is if you have a new machine it's probably time for a new clean build, the only time I would consider that option is in an emergency.

I've tried it... and it does "work"... but there are many "remnants" from the previous hardware.
Not a clean install by any means...   

I would never (unless there was no other choice) install an image backed from one pc to a completely different pc. That's asking for trouble.
 
However, I have used Ghost and now Acronis and I would never go back to anything else. Both Ghost and Acronis allow you to install the backed up image to a blank drive/differrent drive without an OS. Really think about that for a minute!!
 
Yep!

Jim Roseberry
I've tried it... and it does "work"... but there are many "remnants" from the previous hardware.
Not a clean install by any means...   

 
 Same here.  It was because the chipsets were from the same manufacturer. 

Doktor Avalanche
I know... But have you actually done it?
My perspective is anyway (as yours) is if you have a new machine it's probably time for a new clean build, the only time I would consider that option is in an emergency.

Sure, I do it all the time at work. How well something like that works depends on how close the systems are, and how you do the image. So long as you have the same type of harddrive interface (meaning legacy, AHCI, nVME, etc) it'll probably work. The Windows HAL will detect the new hardware when you start up and install the basic drivers, then you reboot and do specific drier installs. Windows is fully capable of having multiple hardware profiles so no issues.
 
If your hardware is too disparate, like different boot types or too much motherboard changes, then you need something to generalize the image. I don't know if the home version of Acronis does it but their Snap Deploy software has a feature called "Universal Deploy" that'll generalize the image. You provide it with a folder full of drivers, it'll handle the rest.