I currently have a static version of Partimage installed & there seems to be a problem restoring the gzip clone I made with this same static version. It complains that its own compression-level is invalid. This was a single 4.3GB clone file (sda1_img.gz.000) of my root partition. I didn't use the "split" option of Partimage because my kernel supports both LBD (large block device) & LSF (large single file).

After the unsuccessful attempt at restoring the single large clone file, I used the "split" option of Partimage to create a set of gzip clones (sda1-img.gz.000, sda1_img.gz.001 & sda1-img.gz.002). This time the restore operation was successful. Actually I didn't write anything back to my disk because I used the "simulation" mode of Partimage in both instances

My current version of Partimage is 0.6.5 (partimage-static-0.6.5-1.rh9.rf.i386) but I ran into this problem with other distribution versions of Partimage too. Those other versions were even worst, they all completed the clone operation successfully but none of them would do a restore. I even tried the partimage-0.6.4-static.tar.bz2 package but couldn't restore any clone either.

I think Partimage may be using a version of Gzip that doesn't support (LSF) large single files. I guess that if your clone file is bigger than 2GB you are SOL. Maybe they are using gzip to compress & some other program to de-compress the clones.

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has had this problem with Partimage & especially those of you who know how to solve it. ---Thank you for reading this post.

My response may throw your head into a spin.
According to the CVS naming convention, any software whose version is below version 1.0, is considered unstable/un-refined. Take a look at this utility's version number which has never failed me, and can be downloaded and used for the imaging features without obligation. Just make sure the image's required partition size is the same as it's original partition by going through a "mock" restoration of the image to see what partition size is required as this utility creates it's images to fit within C.H.S. values, if your original partition does not conform, you may not be able to do a restoration.
There is a way around wrong sized partition issues, just use it's resize features to resize your partition by a couple megabytes so it can resize the partition to fall within the C.H.S. values before making an image of it, then you'll be able to either make a new partition with this utility to restore the image to it, or restore the image in the original "properly sized partition".
EDIT: BTW. this utility makes compressed images without un-allocated sectors, meaning, A Linux root partition which uses up 5.5GB of it's partition, the image will be 1.5GB in size.