full hard disk copy

dd if=/dev/hdx of=/dev/hdy
dd if=/dev/hdx of=/path/to/image
dd if=/dev/hdx | gzip > /path/to/image.gz

Hdx could be hda, hdb etc. In the second example gzip is used to compress the image if it is really just a backup.

Restore Backup of hard disk copy

dd if=/path/to/image of=/dev/hdx

gzip -dc /path/to/image.gz | dd of=/dev/hdx

MBR backup

In order to backup only the first few bytes containing the MBR and the partition table you can use dd as well.

dd if=/dev/hdx of=/path/to/image count=1 bs=512

MBR restore

dd if=/path/to/image of=/dev/hdx