Thanks for the quick response saikee.

(1) Any suggestions on a good Linux live CD? Minimal configuration would be nice since I'm only trying to do one quick thing with it.

(2) I would be cloning from a first partition to another first partition, so hopefully there are no problems there.

Figuring out what I need to know about sectors and blocks and that sort of low level hard drive stuff is a little bit confusing. Could you help me understand what parameters I would need to give DD or point me to a relevant online resource?