--On Thursday, June 07, 2007 9:18 AM -0400 Matt Hyclak <hyclak at math.ohiou.edu> wrote: > I believe it goes something like: > > cd /some/input/dir > tar cvf - . | (cd /to/here; tar xvf -) If sparse files (with unallocated "holes" in them) are involved, dump might be a better choice. I don't think tar can preserve holes. It might, however, replace long runs of zeroes with holes, which might be sufficient.