How to copy the files of a hard-disk from one computer to another, across a network, without loosing file attributes? That’s kind of easy using pax and ssh (pax is probably only available on BSD. cpio on others will do fine, too):

cd directory/to/copy
pax -w -x sv4crc . |
  ssh root@remotehost "cd directory/to/copy/into && pax -r -p e"

You should use "root", to maintain correct ownership of files. Use format sv4crc, as most other formats are limited to a path-length of 255.

To double-check that all files were transfered correctly, make use of mtree:

cd directory/to/copy
mtree -c -k md5digest -p . |
  ssh root@remotehost "cd directory/to/copy/into && mtree -k md5digest -p ."

If there’s no output, everything is OKAY!