Which version of clockwork recovery creates backups as a tar files? I have used several versions of CWM recovery on my Motorola Droid 2.
One of them was able to back up into a .tar (cache.ext3.tar, data.ext3.tar nandroid.md5, recovery.img, system.ext3.tar) as opposed to the .img files that I am getting now.

Now I can't seem to find that version anymore; can someone tell me which version was able to do that?

(Currently running v5.0.2.0 from http://www.clockworkmod.com/rommanager)
There is no incompatibility for backups/restores between CWM versions 2.x, 3.x and 4.x. Both the filenames and the contents of the backup files will be the same.

With the CWM version 5.x:


It can read and restore the backup files created by all the older versions of CWM.
If you create a backup with 5.x, an try to restore it in one of the older CWM versions, two issues come up:


File formats:

The contents of /data and /sdcard/.android_secure are now in tar files instead of the old yaffs2 image files.
Filenames:

The backup filenames have changed from partition_name.img to partition_name.fstype.ext.





To answer your question:

Since you have files like the partition_name.fstype.ext, they refer to a backup from the CWM version 5.x.

e.g., your file system.ext3.tar is from the partition system, using file system ext3 and backed up within a .tar file.