Preserves the permission, user, group, time-stamps, and complete original name and path. Granted, there's a small overlap with what gzip also provides, but a t

Preserves the permission, user, group, time-stamps, and complete original name and path. Granted, there's a small overlap with what gzip also provides, but a tar file is as close to the original as you generally gets. Oh, and exotic: support for sparse files (if enabled).