clone ext3 partitions to smaller disk

[Riccardo Castellani]

I need to clone EXT3 partions to new smaller hard disk.
I thought to create manually partition table (by fdisk) on my new disk with correct partitions size, then I will copy every partition content by followed command:

cp -dpPR <source> <destination>

or

find . -mount0 -print0 | cpio -0dump <destination>


I wish to use whole size of my new disk which will host the new resized partitions.
I thought to reduce by Gparted partitions on original disk but it's very difficult to get exact size which correspond to new disk size.
Suggestions