Cloning hard drive with dd or other?

[Patton Echols]

I have a failing hard drive that boots WinXP for one of my work machines.

I want to clone the drive while it's still alive and run from the 
clone.  I had expected to use dd and was reading to try and see if there 
are challenges I am unaware of. The comments to this article:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19141/clone-a-hard-drive-using-an-ubuntu-live-cd/

say that it will not work if the drives have different geometries. 


Does anyone know of work arounds / other solutions that may accomplish 
what I need to do?

Thanks,

-- PE