Thanks saikee.

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=32256 conv=noerror

did work perfect. It took thirty-three minutes for 40 GB hda disk to dump. It was such a piece of cake that it felt anticlimax...

side effect:
Old Maxtor 40 GB ... Noisy and slow
New Seagate 160 GB ... Silent and fast

Thanks again. Yours is a very good article.