[ale] block dev over net?

[dcorbin at machturtle.com (David Corbin)]

I have a laptop whose hard drive is dying.  I've got backups of most of 
the data I think I need. For a full-size hard drive, I'd buy a new one 
and try to make a direct image on it.  But what would be easier is to 
make an image copy over the network, and restore that image once I have 
the new hard drive installed. 

Can I make such an image over the network, with a reasonable chance of 
restoring it over the network on a virgin drive?  Any reason not to do 
this?  (I've go the disk space on my file server) Whats the best command 
to do this?

It's a Gentoo system and I plan on installing Gentoo again.

David