I need file archive format with the following featuresIt is compressed (not plain tar or iso).It can backup (and restore) linux root file system keeping owners, symlinks, sparse files, devices, etc (like tar).It should list files in archive quickly (like zip). It should extract one file quickly (like zip).As far as I know zip, rar and 7z do not preserve owners.Newest tar format (POSIX 1003.1-2001, pax) still list and extract files slowly. It seem that it reads and uncompresses the whole archive to list all files.Maybe I missing some archive formats or tricks like using squashfs?
Archive for root file system with quick random access
tar;zip;archive