Moving from single to multipartition

[Bob Alexander <bob@ngi.it>]

Dear Debian-friends,
I am moving my fully updated Debian sid from a single partition to a 
multipartition scheme.

My old "monopartition" which is currently alive is now on /dev/hda12 and 
is around 3.5 GB.

The doubt I am having is how to properly move the / data to the new 70MB 
filesystem/partition.

I have two hypothesis:

1) fresh install of sarge netinst to new filesystems, point apt-get to 
unstable, import dpkg --set-selections, dist-upgrade, upgrade, copy all 
old /etc data onto the new /etc and the old /home to the new /home.

2) Copy the old /var, /tmp, /usr and /home data onto the new partitions, 
delete them, copy the rest on the new /

Any advice ??

Please help me understand the proper cpio options for my situation 
(especially for the / filesystem with /proc and /dev ...).

Thank you in advance,
Robert