I have two 1TB single-partition hard disks configured as RAID1, of which I would like to make an off-site backup on a third disk, which I am still to buy. The idea is to store the backup at a relative's house, considerably far away from my place, in the hope that all the information will be safe in the case of a global thermonuclear apocalypse.

Of course, this backup would be well encrypted. What I still have to decide is whether I am going to simply tar the entire partition or, instead, use dd to create an image of the disks. Is there any non-trivial difference between these two approaches that I could be overlooking? This off-site backup would be updated no more than two or three times a year, in the best of the cases, so performance should not be a factor to be pondered at all.

What, and why, would you use if you were me? dd, tar, or a third option?