How to Extract TAR Files on Windows

• .tar - Standard TAR file (uncompressed archive)
• .tar.gz or .tgz - TAR file compressed with gzip
• .tar.bz2 or .tbz2 - TAR file compressed with bzip2
• .tar.xz - TAR file compressed with xz
• .tar.zst - TAR file compressed with Zstandard

Windows doesn't natively support any of these formats, but the methods below work for all TAR variants.

Steps to Extract TAR Files with 7-Zip:

1. Download and install 7-Zip from the official website
2. Right-click on the TAR file (or TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, etc.)
3. Select "7-Zip" from the context menu
4. Choose "Extract Here" to extract in the current folder, or
5. Select "Extract To..." to specify a destination folder
6. For compressed TAR files (like .tar.gz), 7-Zip will automatically handle both the compression and the TAR archive

Steps to Extract TAR Files with WinRAR:

1. Download and install WinRAR (trial version available)
2. Right-click on the TAR file (or compressed variant)
3. Select "Extract files..." from the context menu
4. Choose the destination folder in the dialog
5. Click "OK" to begin the extraction

Prerequisites:

• Windows 10 version 2004+ or Windows 11
• WSL enabled and a Linux distribution installed (e.g., Ubuntu)

Step 1: Install WSL if not already installed

Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

wsl --install

Step 2: Access your TAR file through WSL

Windows drives are available in WSL under /mnt/. For example, your C: drive is at /mnt/c/

cd /mnt/c/Users/YourUsername/Downloads

Step 3: Extract the TAR file using Linux commands

For standard .tar files:

tar -xf filename.tar

For .tar.gz files:

tar -xzf filename.tar.gz

For .tar.bz2 files:

tar -xjf filename.tar.bz2

For .tar.xz files:

tar -xJf filename.tar.xz

For Standard TAR Files:

1. Open PowerShell (search for "PowerShell" in the Start menu)
2. Navigate to the folder containing your TAR file:

cd C:\Path\To\Your\Folder

3. Extract the TAR file using the Expand-Archive cmdlet:

Expand-Archive -Path "filename.tar" -DestinationPath "C:\extraction\path"

For Compressed TAR Files (.tar.gz, .tgz):

Windows PowerShell 5.1+ can handle these with a two-step process:

# First decompress the gzip layer
$gzipPath = "C:\Path\To\file.tar.gz"
$tarPath = $gzipPath -replace '\.gz$',''
$input = New-Object System.IO.FileStream $gzipPath, ([IO.FileMode]::Open), ([IO.FileAccess]::Read), ([IO.FileShare]::Read)
$output = New-Object System.IO.FileStream $tarPath, ([IO.FileMode]::Create), ([IO.FileAccess]::Write), ([IO.FileShare]::None)
$gzipStream = New-Object System.IO.Compression.GzipStream $input, ([IO.Compression.CompressionMode]::Decompress)
$buffer = New-Object byte[](1024)
while($true){
    $read = $gzipStream.Read($buffer, 0, 1024)
    if ($read -le 0){break}
    $output.Write($buffer, 0, $read)
}
$gzipStream.Close()
$output.Close()
$input.Close()

# Then extract the resulting TAR file
Expand-Archive -Path $tarPath -DestinationPath "C:\extraction\path"