External Bootable Drive

Y'all:

My laptop recently failed --a complete hardware failure-- and I ordered a new one. I pulled the drive out and put it in an external enclosure so I could get all my files (up to the last minute before the crash) off, but now I'm wondering if the following is possible:

1. Make an image of the (now external) drive from a different system to my NAS.
2. Boot the new laptop.
3. Log into the NAS.
4. Restore from the image on the NAS to the new computer.

The drive sizes will be the same, and the systems are similar (though not identical). Will Acronis copy everything that's needed --boot records and such-- so that I can pull the data off this old disk and boot off a restore from the image on a different machine?

I assume I have to buy a second copy of Trueimage to load on the machine I'm pulling the image from, since my actual copy of Acronis is on the machine that's dead...

Once I get this cleaned up, I can pull the old drive out of the external case, put it back in the broken system, and ship it back for a refund (it's still under warranty).

Any thoughts?

Russ