Tar works fine with or without compression. If space isn't an issue and you
have a fast connection, it can be faster to simply transfer uncompressed
than to go through the compression/decompression overhead.

kyle

On Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 11:35 AM Esmé Cowles <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> That seems like a reasonable approach to me. Aren't .docx files
> directories of XML files in a Zip container? If so, they probably wouldn't
> compress much anyway.
>
> I recently had to download large sets of files from two different
> services, and one of them used Zip and the other used uncompressed Tar. The
> Zip packaging was awful because it needed to be split into a lot of files
> to avoid having one file to too large (they were all around 2GB). But the
> Tar worked much more smoothly, since it could just let me download a single
> 50GB Tar file that worked fine.
>
> -Esmé
>
> > On Sep 21, 2023, at 2:29 PM, Amy Schuler <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> > does anyone use the tar command to group files anymore?  I'm looking to
> > group some .docx files together to archive in a system that does not use
> > folder hierarchies.  I'm thinking of doing this without compression.
> > Thoughts/comments, or good alternatives?
> > Thanks!
> > Amy
> >
> > --
> >
> > Amy C. Schuler (she/her)
> > Director, Information Services & Library
> >
> > Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies | 2801 Sharon Turnpike | Millbrook,
> NY
> > www.caryinstitute.org
>