Ubuntu Installation :: Using Dd To Copy A Whole Harddisk?

I'm going to replace the primary hdd of my box with another one of a different manufacturer, but of the same size (long story, never mind)

My current plan so I won't have to reinstall my system is booting from a Ubuntu CD (or USB stick, whatever) and doing

Code:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

(If sdb happens to be a few megabytes smaller it doesn't matter, the last partition is not important)

Now my questions:

1. Is this going to work? Is it a bad idea?

2. Should I use any parameters for dd, for performance? Like setting bs (or something) to a bit smaller than the both HDD's (equal) cache size?

If that matters, the hdd contains both NTFS, ext3/4 and reiserfs partitions. I use grub to boot Ubuntu, WinXP and Win7.