backing up the hard drive

[tickticker]

Hello everyone,

moving a server from mandrake to redhat, but I'd like to tar.gz the Mandrake drives, minus the proc directory, for backup purposes, before i wipe it and install RH.  basically, the whole drive in one tar.gz file that I can copy off the machine in case i might need something.

Would anyone happen to know what the tar command would be for this?  I would play around and look myself but there is a time crunch here, and ark is too slow.

Thank you for you quick replies

anthony