TAR to TAR.Z (TZ) Converter
Convert your tar files to tar.z online & free
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How to convert TAR 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
TAR (Tape Archive) is a Unix archive format originating in Version 7 Unix at AT&T Bell Labs in January 1979, originally designed for writing file backups to magnetic tape drives. Unlike ZIP or RAR, TAR is a pure archiving format that concatenates multiple files into a single stream without applying compression — each file is preceded by a 512-byte header block containing the filename, permissions, ownership, size, modification time, and checksum, followed by the file data padded to 512-byte boundaries. The format has evolved through several standards: the original V7 format, the POSIX.1-1988 ustar format (extending path lengths and adding support for more file types), and the POSIX.1-2001 pax format supporting extended attributes, arbitrary-length paths, and large file sizes. TAR is almost always paired with a compression tool — gzip (.tar.gz/.tgz), bzip2 (.tar.bz2/.tbz2), xz (.tar.xz), or others — producing a two-layer structure where compression operates on the entire stream for maximum efficiency. One advantage is exceptional Unix metadata fidelity — TAR preserves permissions, ownership, symbolic links, hard links, device files, and extended attributes with greater precision than most competing formats. Universal availability is another core strength: tar is a POSIX-mandated utility present on every Unix-like system, and tools on Windows and macOS handle TAR files natively. TAR remains the standard distribution format for source code, Linux filesystem images, container layers, and system backups.
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.