partimage failing with ext3 fs

I have a 140G ext3 partition with just 12G used. The command
$ partimage -z0 -d -V -f0 -b save /dev/sdb1 /d/img/pim.1.28-MAR
should work trivially. But instead of a watchable accumulating 12G saved image
I am getting a no-event screen with a saved image of size 19189 bytes after
about 2 minutes.
partimage works just fine with fat, fat32, ext2, even ntfs partitions.
I know it doesn't work with exfat systems.
Its Help explicitly states ext3 as a manageable source.
Has anybody else had trouble with ext3 and worked around it?
Do I need to alter my switches?
Thank you!