Native backup/restore partition options

[scott-DPNOqEs/LNQ at public.gmane.org (Scott Ehrlich)]

This afternoon I performed a full installation of CentOS 5 on a dual-boot 
system.   I used ghost 2003 to perserve the WinXP side (before CentOS was 
installed).

Now, to prevent having to reinstall CentOS (or any variant of linux for that 
matter) time after time on other systems, what would be the best way to 
preserve the [linux] installation I've completed, and possibly restore it to 
different-sized partitions/drives?

My first thought was dd, but last I read, it keeps the disk size intact, such 
that dd'ing a restore from, say a dd'ed backed up 160 GB drive, will restore 
the image to 160 GB of space, even if I have a 500 GB drive installed.

I checked out tar and dump/restore, but am not sure if they will do what I 
want.

It would be great to preserve at least the Linux partition in full, all 
filesystems intact, and permit possibly dynamically sized drives to accept the 
restore.  Also, last I experimented, dd for backing up took up a ton of disk 
space because it went from start to finish on the source drive, regardless of 
piping it through gzip, and it took forever (hours).   I waited so long I 
realized it would have simply been faster to just install from original media.

Ideas/hints/experiences welcome.

Thanks.

Scott

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