TAR.Z (TZ) to LHA Converter
Convert your tar.z files to lha online & free
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How to convert TAR.Z to LHA
Select files from Computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, URL or by dragging it on the page.
Choose lha or any other format you need as a result (more than 200 formats supported)
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About formats
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.
LHA (originally LHarc) is a compressed archive format created by Haruyasu Yoshizaki (known online as Yoshi) in May 1988, combining Lempel-Ziv) sliding-window compression with Huffman coding for efficient data reduction. The format achieved enormous popularity in Japan, where it became the dominant archiving standard throughout the late 1980s and 1990s — virtually all Japanese software distribution, from commercial applications to BBS file sharing, relied on LHA archives. The format stores files with per-entry headers containing filename, timestamps, OS-specific attributes, and CRC-16 checksums, using various compression methods designated by two-character codes (lh0 through lh7, with lh5 being the most common general-purpose algorithm). LHA's compression algorithms were influential beyond the format itself: the lh5 method's approach to combining LZSS with static Huffman coding was adopted by the Deflate algorithm used in ZIP, gzip, and PNG. One advantage is the format's historical efficiency — LHA offered strong compression ratios with modest CPU requirements, critical on the relatively slow processors of its era. The format's deep cultural impact in Japanese computing is another notable aspect: LHA was freely distributed, contributing to its ubiquitous adoption across the Japanese software ecosystem. While modern formats have superseded LHA for new archives, it remains relevant for accessing Japanese software archives and retro computing collections, with extraction supported by 7-Zip and other contemporary tools.