# tar -zcvf /backup/mylaptop.tar /[all directories] except /backup (as I don't want to go in circles).
You're going to want to exclude portions of /var, /dev, /proc & /sys, /tmp, ... You're also going to want to dig deeper into command line options to preserve ownership, links rather than hard files, etc.
# tar -zxvf mylaptop.tar
Ah, -z isn't needed because mylaptop.tar is not compressed. The other larger problem is that it overwrites all files, regardless of whether they have been updated or not.
I guess really what I'm saying is no, it is not a good idea. There's plenty of other backup solutions out there that would work better than this scheme. If you have a server and space for the file, rsync would even be a better solution.
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