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
When I wipe my PC I always use Clonezilla. I have a separate
/homepartition and I usually copy/etcinside my user’s home directory just before the cloning. I’d say you should give it a try.