I originally came across DAR when looking for file archival tools. I wasn't interested in archiving filesystems, but it had a few nice properties for me when I

I originally came across DAR when looking for file archival tools. I wasn't interested in archiving filesystems, but it had a few nice properties for me when I used it for file archiving: - Kept my Unix permissions intact (unlike .zip and .7z) - Individual file compression, so you can browse and extract individual files without needing to decompress the whole thing (unlike .tar.gz) - Open format - Older and more widely supported than pixz (though pixz is getting there) Although my usage isn't exactly what DAR was designed for, it fit the bill for me.