Thanks for the varied suggestions on partition backup. The 90 minute dd of the whole partition did not reboot after being re-copied. I modified and used the suggested copy command and it reduced the time to 15 minutes.

cp -ax --reply=yes /a /b

The reverse of this command would not boot.

I am aware of the consequences of "same" drive backups. FWIW I struggled with RedHat 6 and ftape for months.... dropped the whole thing and gave my tape machine the deep six. Another FWIW.... the ASR system from Billy isn't worth a damn if your motherboared dies !!!!

Still looking

Ted in Atlanta