Debian or Embedbian on a powerful 64-bit system

Hello,

Looking to custom build a debian distribution for an embedded system.
Well the embedded system is actually quite powerful with the following
specs:

 1. 64-bit dual core x86
 2. 1GB RAM
 3. 80GB HD

I have tried several different tools:

 1. grml-debootstrap
 2. debootstrap
 3. debirf

But none of them provide a straight forward way to build a rootfs that I
can drop off in a hard drive and boot. grml-debootstrap seems to have
that ability but is too grml specific.

Is emdebian a good choice? Not in terms of size, but more in terms of
the tools necessary to build and deploy?

Thanks for any help and advice.

Uttam