For cloning the two 40G drives as masters on separate IDE interfaces, I'd simply use "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=1024k" and go shopping.
The dd command is useful for cloning. Beyond that my comment was more focused on the actual layout of a partition using the SUSE partitioner vs the acutal layout using Partition Magic or Partition Commander. When I view, using PM or PC, a partition completed by the SUSE partitioner the actual reported layout is different than creating a partition from PM or PC. I first spotted this difference when I created an ext3 partition set for LINUX and then copied them to the 2nd hardrive. The orginal looks like a raw drive partition and the copy looks like a LBA like drive layout; Cylinders, heads, and sectors. The difference is noted but why?