Whenever I wipe my PC, I use tar to make an archive of the whole system. This works, but having to decompress the whole archive to pull files out is very annoying. Is there another archive format that:

  • Preserves permissions (i.e., is Unix-y)
  • Supports strong compression (I use either zstd or xz depending on how long I can be bothered to wait)
  • Supports pulling out individual files quickly
  • @[email protected]English
    8•1 year ago

    Maybe Borg is a possibility. However, I have not yet backed up an entire system with it, but only certain files.

    • The file permissions have always been correct when restoring files in my case.
    • Which compression (LZ4, zlib, LZMA or zstd) and which compression level is used can be specified when creating a backup.
    • Backups can be mounted via FUSE, so that you can restore individual files with an file manager or a terminal emulator, for example.
    • @dbrand666English
      1•1 year ago

      Look at Restic too. Similar feature set. Really simple to set up (I think Borg is too but I haven’t tried it).