Clone any OS partition perfectly

In one box I needed to copy the boot partition to another disk while retaining the MBR and other data.

I simply ran this command:

[code:1:1b1ff110ca]dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1[/code:1:1b1ff110ca]
[b:1b1ff110ca]if[/b:1b1ff110ca] = source patition
[b:1b1ff110ca]of[/b:1b1ff110ca] = destination partition

Here's an interesting article on it

http://www.rajeevnet.com/hacks_hints/os_clone/os_cloning.html

Just remember to unmount the destination partition or you'll get an error message about the device being busy :)