pk stuff

The old standby to clone a partition:
dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/output/file
Apparently a newer tool, dcfldd, does a better job.

Much smaller though not an “image” copy:
tar zcvpf backup.tgz --exclude=dev --exclude=sys --exclude=proc --directory=/ .
And if you don’t want to create the intermediate backup file:
tar zcp --exclude=dev --exclude=sys --exclude=proc --exclude=/this-folder --directory=/ . | tar zx
Note: /sys, /proc and /dev are rebuilt as linux boots and in the no-backup version, you must exclude the destination folder (or the copy never ends).