hi,
we have rhel 5.2 server inn which 570 GB of home area required to be backed up (backup it in some other location on the same server) with same files,permissions,preserving all soft links etc.....
i am going to use tar but i am in doubt whether it takes care of soft links also cap take care of all kind of files etc..
can any body give me proper command with proper flags .

The following switches may be useful for you:

Here is the explanation.

You can also use rsync:

rsync is the way is the way to go. That's a lot of data you're copying - I doubt you want to copy the whole 570GB every time. rsync will only copy the changes. So the first time you use rsync you'll copy all 570GB. Run it again the next day and it'll only copy what has been changed. The best option to use is -a

Which includes both the options goldenbarb mentions.

Backing up 'some other location on the same server' is better than no back up but it's not much of a back up. If any of that data is considered at all important I hope you have another back up. Ideally in a second location (rsync will work over an ssh connection), though I realise sometimes that's not always do-able depending upon budgets and such.

Absolutely.

pankajd, you might also want to exclude some files, so --exclude option could be useful.