While extracting a .tar.gz file isn’t quite as easy as how to find things you lost unzipping a .zip, it’s still pretty straightforward. Tar has been supported since then on almost every platform outside of Windows. This command extracts (-x) the file (-f) specified (in this case, filename.tar.gz) to the current directory. Note that this command also works with other common compression formats such as .tar.bz2. Where most operating systems make it easy to extract and create .zip files, the same can’t really be said for .tar files — at least not in ways that are easy to notice.
Tar GZ and Linux
WinRAR is a popular file compression & archive utility software. It allows users to create, view, and extract files in various archive formats, top 10 cryptocurrency news outlets including its native .RAR format as well as other common formats like .ZIP, .7z, ISO, .TAR, and more. A tar file, often called a tarball, is a collection of files wrapped up in one single file for easy storage.
Extracting .tar.gz Files for Linux
- As we see later, different compression utilities may require different methods for extracting and unzipping files.
- Technical details aside, all you need to remember is that .zip files are more accessible but less space-efficient, while .tar files are less accessible but more space-efficient.
- On the other hand, Windows users can rely on third-party file archiver tools like 7-zip or WinRAR to effortlessly extract files.
Tarbombs are useful for patches and software installers; it’s just a matter of knowing when to use them and when to avoid them. As soon as you execute the command, tar will unzip and extract the file. The extracted content will be saved to the destination folder.
Method 2
In the shell, you can add a file or directory to a tar archive as long as it is not compressed. If your archive has been compressed, you must uncompress it, but you do not need to unarchive it. If the command line isn’t your thing, there are plenty of user-friendly tools available to unzip tar.gz files. Compressing and extracting these files, however, isn’t always intuitive.
Though we mostly focus on .tar.gz files, check out the end of the article for some quick tips on extracting .tar files in other formats. A TAR.GZ file is a combination of two different packaging algorithms. It’s an old utility, surgery in a time before anesthesia invented mainly for accurate data transfer to devices without their own file systems. A tar file (or tarball) contains files in a sequential format, along with metadata about the directory structure and other technical parameters. This quick and easy guide shows you how to unzip or extract tar files such as.tar.gz, .tgz, .gz, etc., on Windows 11 without using third-party software like 7-zip or WinRAR.
Though both .zip and .tar.gz archive and compress files, they do so in different ways. In other words, .zip is a collection of compressed files, while .tar.gz is a compressed collection of files. While every tar.gz file is a .tar archive, not every .gz is a .tar file. The .gz extension represents the gzip compression format, which can be applied to almost any file format to compress data and save space. Where .zip files consist of many individually compressed files, .tar files are compressed as a single package, leaving its files uncompressed. In other words, .zip files are a collection of compressed files, while .tar files are a compressed collection of files.
Similar to the previous error, this error occurs when an archive was saved as a .tar despite not being a .tar archive. To access the Windows command line, search for “command prompt” or “cmd” in the search bar. Right-click the first result and select the “Run as administrator” option.
You also need to be in the directory containing the tar.gz file, like with most terminal commands in Linux. Since Windows doesn’t natively support tar.gz files, you need a third-party tool to open them for you. Most file extraction applications like 7-Zip or WinZip will get the job done.