Recommended imaging/cloning method for Windows 8.1 system

Can anyone recommend a reliable way to completely image/clone a windows 8.1 based system?
I've tried 3 different methods with mixed success:
1. My old faithful method uses EzGIG-III, but the BIOS setting for boot configuration needs to be changed to CMS because the tool is DOS based. The cloning operation takes forever (~12 hours for my machine with a 750GB HDD that only uses 200GB). I've tried it twice. The first time I got a boot error when booting the clone, but Windows managed to automatically repair the boot issue. The second time I had no errors at all.
2. I've tried the free version of Macrium Refect three times. First time was from a bootable USB version and I don't recall any issue. Second time was from within Windows. When I swapped the drive and tried to boot the clone, the boot failed and I got a nasty error message about winload.efi missing. I did some Googling and found a command line procedure to rebuild the missing file, which seemed to work. Third time was also within Windows and everything worked ok (I'm using the resulting clone right now as a matter of fact). Nice thing is the cloning operation only took 2 1/2 hours (compared to 12 hours with EzGIG). Also, I had trouble cloning in the opposite direction - just couldn't get it to work.
3. Third method is the System Image utility that's built into Windows 7/8/8.1. It failed right away claiming the destination location had insufficient space for the image even though the capacity was much greater than the source. I'm working through this right now and am hopeful to get it working. The down side of this method is that two separate operations are needed; one to create the image and a second one to restore it. Also, I wonder if the image will include non-windows partitions (as in Linux dual boot).
I'd appreciate any positive stories about successful cloning / imaging.
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I've tried the free version of Macrium Refect three times. First time was from a bootable USB version and I don't recall any issue. Second time was from within Windows. When I swapped the drive and tried to boot the clone, the boot failed and I got a nasty error message about winload.efi missing..
I've had mixed results with cloning. But restoring from an image always works. If you want reliability, do it that way.
Third method is the System Image utility that's built into Windows 7/8/8.1. It failed right away claiming the destination location had insufficient space for the image even though the capacity was much greater than the source.
The down side of this method is that two separate operations are needed; one to create the image and a second one to restore it.
Also, I wonder if the image will include non-windows partitions (as in Linux dual boot).
1. That problem occurs because the perverse backup program wants to write to each partition on the drive being imaged. See this thread for the fix.
Cant backup 8.1 using system image backup! Error 0x80780119
2. As I said, I've found imaging to be more reliable than cloning. How often would you restore? We image all our computers daily (3am) and retain images for ten days.
3. The image includes all the partitions on the disk - at least mine does.
In case you want to use the built-in imaging program, I can give you a shortcut to it in Windows 8.1.
-Jerry

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