To restore:

gzip -cd path_to_save.cpio.gz | cpio -imV

Why not use tar instead? cpio is slightly more accurate!

• find . -xdev -print0 finds all files and directories without crossing over to other partitions and prints a null delimited list of filenames
• cpio -oa0V takes the list of files to archive from stdin and creates an archive file preserving timestamps and permissions
• cpio -imV extracts the files and directories from stdin while preserving timestamps and permissions