hardlinks

[Dan Lund]

Hi,

I'm pruning down my 1.7Tb of data that has hardlinks galore.
I use an opensource backup software (RVM) that pulls down changes 
nightly, puts them into folders, and anything that hasn't changed that 
day is hardlinked back to the following day.

The thing is, the time has come to backup the entire thing so I can 
blast the disc and re-initialize the volume group.

The problem I'm running into is the app that does the tape backup 
(commvault) is backing up the hardlinks as files.  (which is correct to do)

Here's my dilemma and I'm hoping someone greater than I can help me with 
this problem.
The tree is like such: 
./2006-10-01/site1
./2006-10-01/site2
./2006-10-02/site1
./2006-10-03/site2

(example)

I need to somehow prune down all hardlinks back to the earliest file so 
I can back the whole tree up to tape finally.

What would be the best way to do this?  I've been thinking about this 
for a couple days now and I can't come up with a viable solution.

any help is much appreciated....