That should pe possible. Are you just cloning as a backup, and only need an image, or do you need an actual clone of the partitions?
If you only need an image, then you want to format the free space (NOT fat32, you need to have BIG files). For the puropses of this example, I will assume that /dev/sda3 is the /boot partition, /dev/sda5 is the / partition, and /dev/sda6 is the /home partition. You will most likely need to do this from a live cd. Mount the newly formatted partition to /mnt. Then, to backup the boot partition, run (as root)
Code:
dd if=/dev/sda3 of=/mnt/boot-image.img
BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO MIX UP THE "OF" AND "IF"
The other 2 are fairly simple:
Code:
dd if=/dev/sda5 of=/mnt/fs-root-image.img
dd if=/dev/sda6 of=/mnt/home-image.img
There is probably a way that you could pipe it through gzip or something to compress it and save space, but that's beyond my knowledge.
99% of this is just an application of
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ommand-362506/ It's a
really good (and interesting) read, even if you don't think you'll use it much.