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    Nice and thorough. Welcome to the site... Commented Nov 10, 2014 at 21:31
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    - Sparse with any tar: Just pass -S to most tar implementations, they've all supported it for a long time. - Sparse with rsync: again, pass --sparse, it works. The downside to using any sparse detection is that the tool has to actually read the blocks more, which can introduce a lot of CPU (esp in cases of alternating zero/non-zero runs). Commented Jun 8, 2015 at 23:11
  • It's still better to use bsdtar, even though gnu tar supports the sparse flag, because bsdtar knows how to skip over sparse holes, without processing them (e.g. if you have a 1 TB sparse file with only 1k of data, bsdtar will process 1k of data. Gnu tar will process 1TB. Commented Sep 7, 2015 at 17:24
  • @moveaway00 if bsdtar only processes 1k in that case, then it copies the ideas from star, as star is the first implementation that uses SEEK_DATA/SEEK_HOLE, since that method was invented as a common idea from star and the ZFS guys. Commented Aug 18, 2021 at 6:28
  • I learned quite a bit of workflow-altering information reading this, thank you. Commented Nov 6, 2021 at 17:49