> What about storing each stream as a separate logical file in the tar file? I think that’ll work. Just be sure to name these separate streams in a way so they

> What about storing each stream as a separate logical file in the tar file? I think that’ll work. Just be sure to name these separate streams in a way so they never conflict with other files that might be in the same directory or with other streams that may be in the same file. E.g. in Windows, there’re characters forbidden in file names which may work fine in Linux: https://stackoverflow.com/a/31976060/126995 https://stackoverflow.com/a/31976060/126995 > with a property of "nt_stream_count=2" Read this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa362667%28v=vs.85%29.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3... I don’t think just count is enough. Alternate data streams have names. Other data streams, extended attribute, security descriptor, etc., are essentially unnamed. You can implement some naming schemes for them, e.g. “file” for the main data, “file:xxx” for “xxx” alternative stream of the file, “file?sd” for security descriptor of the file, “file?sparse” for sparse file data. This can result in TAR backups that are more or less readable by the standard tools, but still allow your own tool to restore the complete thing. You have two problems to solve. 1. Directories. Quite often, they contain at least security descriptors. But AFAIK directories just aren’t stored in these TARs. 2. File names and their encoding. AFAIK modern Linux is UTF8 all the way down. Probably TAR is OK with that. But if UTF8 representation of the UCS2 name (WinNT isn’t quite UTF16, UCS2 is a subset of that) is longer than 100 bytes, you’ll have multiple files in your TAR with the same name, they’ll only differ by your extended PAX attributes that contain the complete name. If you combine that with the above fake names with security info & alternate streams, it becomes even more complex. P.S. I’ve been programming for windows for decades, only occasionally for linux or other platforms.