My life is simple - can you make Ghost simple for me ?

I have what I think is a simple question or at least I think it is. Hard Drive fried on one of our laptops, so I replaced the drive and then began the eternal task of loading all the Windows updates (which took forever) as well as programs etc.

I purchased Ghost today thinking it would make it easy to take the current system (which is operation extremely well) and "clone" it to an external hard drive for use if ever needed again.

Now it appears that this program does not do this  - it wants to run backups weekly, monthly or whatever. I don't want to have to do this I just want to the ability to replace the system should it ever be needed as it is today.

 

Can I do this?