The use of dd for disk cloning

There's been a number of questions regarding disk cloning tools and dd has been suggested at least once. I've already considered using dd myself, mainly because ease of use, and that it's readily available on pretty much all bootable Linux distributions.

What is the best way to use dd for cloning a disk? I did a quick Google search, and the first result was an apparent failed attempt . Is there anything I need to do after using dd , i.e. is there anything that CAN'T be read using dd ?

dd is most certainly the best cloning tool, it will create a 100% replica simply by using the following command. I've never had anything wrong with it

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=32M

Keep in mind that you should never use these instructions while cloning a byte on any memory or partition that is being used Even applications like databases can't cope with this and you might end up with corrupted data