In order to separate reading from writing or to store the directory structure
for several writings one can use find and tar:
find PATH -xdev -type d -print0 \
| tar cf FILE --no-recursion --null --files-from -
The directories will be stored in the file FILE. It can be extracted with
tar xpf FILE -C DESTINATION
where directory DESTINATION must already exist.
Regards,
jvp.