ALZ to TAR.Z (TZ) Converter
Convert your alz files to tar.z online & free
alz
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How to convert ALZ to TAR.Z
Select files from Computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, URL or by dragging it on the page.
Choose tar.z or any other format you need as a result (more than 200 formats supported)
Let the file convert and you can download your tar.z file right afterwards
About formats
ALZ is a proprietary archive format created by ESTsoft, a South Korean software company, as the native format of their ALZip archiver first released in 1999. The format was designed to address a specific need in the Korean market: splitting large archives into multiple volumes for distribution when email attachment size limits and slow internet connections made transferring large files impractical. ALZ archives support file compression, multi-volume splitting with configurable segment sizes, and basic file organization with directory structures. The format became widely adopted in South Korea, where ALZip established itself as one of the most popular archiving utilities due to its free availability for personal use and localized Korean interface. At its peak, ALZip was installed on a majority of Korean personal computers, making ALZ a common interchange format for file sharing within the country. One advantage is reliable multi-volume handling — ALZ was specifically engineered for splitting and reassembling archives across volume boundaries, a feature that was central to its design rather than an afterthought. The format's tight integration with ALZip provides a streamlined user experience for compression and extraction tasks. While ALZ saw limited adoption outside South Korea due to the availability of universal formats like ZIP and RAR, it remains encountered in files originating from Korean sources and can be extracted using ALZip, 7-Zip, and other compatible utilities.
TAR.Z is a compound archive format combining TAR archiving with Unix compress, one of the earliest general-purpose data compression tools available on Unix systems. The compress utility, originally written by Spencer Thomas, Joe Orost, and others around 1985, implements adaptive LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) compression — a dictionary-based algorithm that builds a translation table during compression and decompression. The TAR layer bundles files with full Unix metadata into a single stream, and compress reduces the stream size typically by 40-60%. TAR.Z was the standard compressed archive format on Unix systems throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, before gzip emerged as a patent-free replacement. The LZW algorithm used by compress was subject to patent claims by Unisys (holders of the LZW patent through Sperry), which motivated the development of gzip as an unencumbered alternative. One advantage is universal legacy compatibility — TAR.Z files can be extracted on any Unix system, including very old installations where newer compression tools may not be available. The format's historical ubiquity means that decades of archived software, documentation, and system backups exist as TAR.Z files. While TAR.GZ and TAR.XZ have replaced TAR.Z for new archives, the uncompress/zcat tools remain standard on all Unix-like systems, ensuring continued accessibility of legacy archives.