On Mon, 2012-11-26 at 21:44 +1100, Russell Coker wrote: 
On Mon, 26 Nov 2012, Andrew Greig <pushin.linux@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have 2 x identical Lenovo IdeaPads each 160Gb storage.

Are the drives identical?  If they aren't does the target of the clone 
operation have a disk that is bigger than the source or which is bigger than 
the used part of the source?

If so then you don't need to worry about partition tables etc, just copy the 
raw data from the disk.  You can do that safely by booting both systems from a 
recovery CD or USB stick.  You can even copy the raw disk if the source is 
running in multi-user mode as long as there are few disk writes in progress 
and you run fsck on the target afterwards.
Thanks Russell, Matthew and Michael,

It's amazing the things that can trip one up.  Both machines were running WiFi networking so I decided to see how it would go with an ethernet cable connection instead.  I started Clonezilla in the source machine with a USB DVD drive and the CZ disc, when it was in standby I disconnected the drive and used it to boot the target drive. With both machines on ethernet cable it is swinging along nicely.  Just as well that I remembered to run them both on 240v.  I am pretty sure the batteries would have expired during this process.  Thanks for your support.   I will report on the success of the exercise, tomorrow.

Andrew Greig