archiving and restoring disk images...

[lists at battleface.com]

I dumped a disk image of my root partition like this:

dd if=/dev/da0s1a | gzip -9 -c > where.ever.gz

Does this include the boot sector? In other words, if I need to restore 
this disk image I can do the reverse and the boot sector and root 
partition will be back to that state. How should I go about this, if 
what I'm saying is valid? Can I do this in single user mode or should I 
boot from CD and go from there? I haven't needed to do this yet, but I 
want to know how. If dumping the root partition like this is not a good 
means of backing up, please say so. What would you recommend? I tar 
most everything else.

Thanks for the help.
Alex

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Alexander Sendzimir                             802 863 5502
  Mac Tutor of Vermont, LLC         info @ mactutor . vt . us
   Colchester, VT 05446