One minor comment here, as you suggest using dd for backup.

I always use tar because it only copies the logical filesystem hierarchy, as opposed to dd which copies the low-level disk format bytes.

Using tar is good enough because the filesystem does not contain anything "hidden" outside the directory areas, it is just normal unix filesystem. When you dd it, you end up with huge file that contains propably mostly empty area, with tar you only copy the parts that are necessary

I have done this a LOT so I can assure you it works

Another nice thing with tar backups, you can keep them on your PC and later selectively restore files from there if you manage to botch up something while experimenting. If your backups are dd'ed files, it's just chunk of data, you cannot easily fish out single files from it. (well of course you can do tha, but you need to mount it on loop fs and that's an extra hassle...)