ARC to TAR.Z (TZ) Converter
Convert your arc files to tar.z online & free
arc
tar.z
How to convert ARC 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
ARC is one of the earliest widely-used compressed archive formats for personal computers, created by Thom Henderson of System Enhancement Associates (SEA) in 1985 for MS-DOS. The format combines multiple files into a single archive with per-file compression, supporting several compression methods including no compression (stored), run-length encoding, Huffman coding, and LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) variants. Each file entry in an ARC archive carries its own header with the original filename, compressed and uncompressed sizes, timestamp, CRC checksum, and compression method indicator. ARC became the dominant archive format on DOS-based bulletin board systems (BBS) during the mid-1980s, serving as the primary means of distributing software, documents, and data files online before the internet era. The format sparked a notable legal controversy when Phil Katz created a compatible utility (PKARC), leading to a lawsuit from SEA that ultimately motivated Katz to develop the ZIP format as a legal alternative. One advantage of ARC was its per-file compression approach, allowing individual files to be extracted without decompressing the entire archive. The integrated CRC checksums provided another benefit, enabling reliable verification of data integrity after transfer over error-prone modem connections. While ZIP and more modern formats supplanted ARC by the early 1990s, the format holds historical significance as a foundational technology in the evolution of data compression and file distribution.
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.