That's why you rarely see just a.tar file and more commonly encounter.tar.gz or.tgz files. Installing tar. On Linux, BSD, Illumos, and even Mac OS, the tar command is already installed for you. On Windows, the easiest way to handle.tar files is to install the LGPL open source 7-Zip utility. The UnxUtils project on Sourceforge has lots of Windows versions of common Unix utilities without the need for Cygwin. If you need a GUI, WinZip can read tarballs, and so can WinRar. They behave the same as you describe 7-Zip, though. If you open a.tar.gz file, they first unzip the file and then open the inner tar file. There's not much you.
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Short for Tape Archive, and sometimes referred to as tarball, a file that has the TAR file extension is a file in the Consolidated Unix Archive format. A program or command that can open archives is needed to open a TAR file.
Because the TAR file format is used to store multiple files in one single file, it's a popular method for both archiving purposes and for sending multiple files over the internet, like for software downloads.
The TAR file format is common in Linux and Unix systems, but only for storing data, not compressing it. TAR files are often compressed after being created, but those become TGZ files, using the TGZ, TAR.GZ, or GZ extension.
![Windows Windows](/uploads/1/2/4/9/124901755/595044073.png)
TAR is also an acronym for technical assistant request, but it has nothing to do with the TAR file format.
How to Open a TAR File
TAR files, being a relatively common archive format, can be opened with most popular zip/unzip tools. PeaZip and 7-Zip are two of the better free file extractors that support both opening TAR files and creating TAR files, but check out this list of free file extractors for a number of other choices.
B1 Online Archiver and WOBZIP are two other TAR openers but they run in your browser instead of through a downloadable program. Just upload the TAR to one of these two websites to extract out the contents.
Unix systems can open TAR files without any external programs by using the following command, where 'file.tar' is the name of the TAR file:
How to Make a Compressed TAR File
What been described on this page is just how to open, or extract files from a TAR archive. If you want to make your own TAR file from folders or files, the easiest way would be to use a graphical program like 7-Zip.
- Select all the files and folders you want in the TAR file.
- Right-click one of the highlighted items and click Add to archive.
- Choose tar from the Archive format drop-down menu.
Another option, so long as you're on Linux, is to use a command-line command to build the TAR file. However, with this command, you'll also be compressing the TAR file, which will produce a TAR.GZ file.
This command will make a TAR.GZ file out of a folder or a single file, whichever you choose:
This is what this command is doing:
- -c: Create an archive
- -z: Use gzip to compress the archive
- -v: Enable verbose mode to show the progress of the creation process
- -f: Lets you specify the name of the archive
Here's an example if you want to 'TAR a file' (make a TAR file) from a folder named /myfiles/to make it called files.tar.gz:
How to Convert a TAR File
Zamzar and Online-Convert.com are two free file converters, both web services, that will convert a TAR file to ZIP, 7Z, TAR.BZ2, TAR.GZ, YZ1, LZH, or CAB. Most of these formats are actually compressed formats, which TAR is not, meaning that these services act to compress the TAR as well.
Keep in mind that if you use one of those online converters, you'll need to first upload the TAR file to one of those websites. If the file is large, you might be better off with a dedicated, offline converting tool.
All things considered, the best way to convert TAR to ISO would be to use the free AnyToISO program. It even works via the right-click context menu so you can just right-click the TAR file and then choose to convert it to an ISO file.
Considering that TAR files are single-file collections of multiple files, TAR to ISO conversions make the most sense since the ISO format is basically the same sort of file. ISO images, however, are much more common and supported than TAR, especially in Windows.
TAR files are just containers for other files, similar to folders. Therefore, you can't just convert a TAR file to CSV, PDF, or some other non-archive file format. To 'convert' a TAR file to one of those formats really just means to extract the files out of the archive, which you can do with one of the file extractors mentioned above.
Is Your File Still Not Opening?
The simplest explanation for why your file doesn't open like described above is that it doesn't really end in the .TAR file extension. Double-check the suffix to be sure; some file extensions are spelled very similarly and it can be easy to mistake them for other file formats.
For example, a TAB file uses two of the three file extensions TAR has but is not related to the format at all. They're instead either Typinator Set, MapInfo TAB, Guitar Tablature, or Tab Separated Data files — each of those formats open with unique applications, none of which are file extraction tools like 7-Zip.
The best thing to do if you're dealing with a file that isn't a Tape Archive file is to research that specific file extension on Lifewire or elsewhere on the internet, and you should be able to find which applications are used to open or convert the file.
If you do have a TAR file but it doesn't open with the suggests from above, it's likely that your file extractor doesn't recognize the format when you double-click it. If you're using 7-Zip, right-click the file, choose 7-Zip, and then either Open archive or Extract files.
The tar command on Linux is often used to create .tar.gz or .tgz archive files, also called “tarballs.” This command has a large number of options, but you just need to remember a few letters to quickly create archives with tar. The tar command can extract the resulting archives, too.
The GNU tar command included with Linux distributions has integrated compression. It can create a .tar archive and then compress it with gzip or bzip2 compression in a single command. That’s why the resulting file is a .tar.gz file or .tar.bz2 file.
Compress an Entire Directory or a Single File
Use the following command to compress an entire directory or a single file on Linux. It’ll also compress every other directory inside a directory you specify–in other words, it works recursively.
Here’s what those switches actually mean:
- -c: Create an archive.
- -z: Compress the archive with gzip.
- -v: Display progress in the terminal while creating the archive, also known as “verbose” mode. The v is always optional in these commands, but it’s helpful.
- -f: Allows you to specify the filename of the archive.
Let’s say you have a directory named “stuff” in the current directory and you want to save it to a file named archive.tar.gz. You’d run the following command:
Or, let’s say there’s a directory at /usr/local/something on the current system and you want to compress it to a file named archive.tar.gz. You’d run the following command:
How To Extract Tar Files
Compress Multiple Directories or Files at Once
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While tar is frequently used to compress a single directory, you could also use it to compress multiple directories, multiple individual files, or both. Just provide a list of files or directories instead of a single one. For example, let’s say you want to compress the /home/ubuntu/Downloads directory, the /usr/local/stuff directory, and the /home/ubuntu/Documents/notes.txt file. You’d just run the following command:
Just list as many directories or files as you want to back up.
Extract Tar File Windows 7 Zip
Exclude Directories and Files
In some cases, you may wish to compress an entire directory, but not include certain files and directories. You can do so by appending an
--exclude
switch for each directory or file you want to exclude.For example, let’s say you want to compress /home/ubuntu, but you don’t want to compress the /home/ubuntu/Downloads and /home/ubuntu/.cache directories. Here’s how you’d do it:
The
--exclude
switch is very powerful. It doesn’t take names of directories and files–it actually accepts patterns. There’s a lot more you can do with it. For example, you could archive an entire directory and exclude all .mp4 files with the following command:Use bzip2 Compression Instead
While gzip compression is most frequently used to create .tar.gz or .tgz files, tar also supports bzip2 compression. This allows you to create bzip2-compressed files, often named .tar.bz2, .tar.bz, or .tbz files. To do so, just replace the -z for gzip in the commands here with a -j for bzip2.
Gzip is faster, but it generally compresses a bit less, so you get a somewhat larger file. Bzip2 is slower, but it compresses a bit more, so you get a somewhat smaller file. Gzip is also more common, with some stripped-down Linux systems including gzip support by default, but not bzip2 support. In general, though, gzip and bzip2 are practically the same thing and both will work similarly.
For example, instead of the first example we provided for compressing the stuff directory, you’d run the following command:
Extract an Archive
Once you have an archive, you can extract it with the tar command. The following command will extract the contents of archive.tar.gz to the current directory.
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It’s the same as the archive creation command we used above, except the
-x
switch replaces the -c
switch. This specifies you want to extract an archive instead of create one.Extract Tar Files Windows 7 64 Bit
You may want to extract the contents of the archive to a specific directory. You can do so by appending the
-C
switch to the end of the command. For example, the following command will extract the contents of the archive.tar.gz file to the /tmp directory.If the file is a bzip2-compressed file, replace the “z” in the above commands with a “j”.
Extract Tar Files In Linux
This is the simplest possible usage of the tar command. The command includes a large number of additional options, so we can’t possibly list them all here. For more information. run the info tar command at the shell to view the tar command’s detailed information page. Press the q key to quit the information page when you’re done. You can also read tar’s manual online.
If you’re using a graphical Linux desktop, you could also use the file-compression utility or file manager included with your desktop to create or extract .tar files. On Windows, you can extract and create .tar archives with the free 7-Zip utility.
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