I wonder, why you want to replace a bash script with a perl script for this job?

If the bash script is doing the job, why do you want to replace it?

Even for learning purposes I don't see much use of doing such things.

Did you try to separate each option in @args?

my @args = ("/bin/tar", "-czv", "--exclude-from=$excludes", "-f",   $s
+torageLocation.$archiveName, $archiveDir );
system(@args) == 0 or die "system @args failed: $?";
[download]

I am still wondering about which "old option 'b'" your tar is complaining... Crackers2's answer helped