Compress TAR to TAR.GZ – Add Gzip Compression

Why Compress a TAR File?

Because TAR doesn't compress. It bundles. A 500MB folder becomes a 500MB .tar file. That's fine for local transfers, but for email, cloud storage, or archiving? You want it smaller. Gzip is the simplest way. It's fast, it's everywhere, and it turns that 500MB TAR into maybe 200MB depending on what's inside. This tool does exactly that: takes your plain TAR, adds Gzip compression, and gives you a standard .tar.gz file. No command line, no guessing flags.

I Already Have a TAR.GZ. Why Would I Need This?

You probably don't. This is for people who have plain TAR files – maybe they were created with `tar -cvf` instead of `tar -czvf`. Or maybe you downloaded a TAR from somewhere and it's huge. You want to compress it for storage. Instead of extracting everything and re-archiving, you just upload the TAR and we add the compression in one step. It's like a shortcut.

Is TAR.GZ Smaller Than ZIP?

Usually, yes. Gzip compresses better than ZIP's DEFLATE algorithm. Not by a huge margin, but noticeable. Plus, TAR.GZ preserves Unix permissions, which ZIP doesn't. If you're on Linux, TAR.GZ is almost always the better choice over ZIP for compression and compatibility.