CAB to TAR.Z (TZ) Converter
Convert your cab files to tar.z online & free
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How to convert CAB 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)
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About formats
CAB (Cabinet) is a compressed archive format developed by Microsoft for efficient software distribution and Windows component packaging. Introduced around 1996, CAB files serve as the container format for Windows Installer packages (.msi), Windows system updates, driver distributions, and ActiveX component downloads. The format supports three compression algorithms — MSZIP (Microsoft's Deflate implementation), Quantum (statistical compression), and LZX (an LZ77 variant with Huffman coding optimized for executable files) — with LZX typically delivering the highest ratios. CAB archives organize files into folders (compression units) where files within the same folder are compressed as a continuous stream for improved ratios, and archives can span multiple volumes for distribution on size-limited media. One advantage is deep Windows ecosystem integration — CAB files are handled natively by Windows without third-party software, used in everything from OS installation media to driver packages and system updates. The LZX compression algorithm provides another strength, achieving particularly strong compression on compiled code and PE executables, which is ideal for the format's primary role in software distribution. Microsoft's makecab tool ships with every Windows installation, and CAB extraction is built into Windows Explorer. The format continues to serve as infrastructure for Windows deployment and update mechanisms across enterprise and consumer environments.
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.