Archiving and compressing files: Difference between revisions

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''Parent page: [[Storage and file management]]''

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive_file Archiving] means creating one file that contains a number of smaller files within it. Reducing the number of files by creating an archive can improve the efficiency of file storage and help you stay within [[Storage_and_file_management#Filesystem_quotas_and_policies|quota limits]].  Archiving can also improve the efficiency of [[General directives for migration|file transfers]]. It is faster for the secure copy protocol ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_copy scp]), for example, to transfer one archive file of a reasonable size than thousands of small files of equal total size.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression Compressing] means encoding a file such that the same information is contained in fewer bytes of storage. The advantage for long-term data storage should be obvious. For [[General directives for migration|data transfers]], the time spent for compressing data must be balanced against the time saved moving fewer bytes as described in this discussion of [https://bluewaters.ncsa.illinois.edu/data-transfer-doc data compression and transfer] from the US National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

* The best-known tool for archiving files in the Linux community is <tt>tar</tt>.  Here is [[a tutorial on 'tar']].

* A replacement for <tt>tar</tt> called <tt>dar</tt> offers some advantages in functionality.  Here is [[Dar|a tutorial on 'dar']].  Both <tt>tar</tt> and <tt>dar</tt> can compress files as well as archive.