| Tool / Method | Archive Format | Time (sec) | Compressed Size | |---------------|----------------|------------|------------------| | Windows tar | tar.gz (level 6) | 8.4 | 890 MB | | 7-Zip (GUI) | 7z (ultra) | 12.7 | 812 MB | | PowerShell Compress-Archive | zip | 23.1 | 1.05 GB | | WinRAR (CLI) | rar5 (normal) | 9.2 | 878 MB | | Windows tar | tar.xz | 18.6 | 745 MB | | Windows tar | tar.zst (level 3) | 6.1 | 915 MB |
:: Enable long paths for current session reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem /v LongPathsEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f :: Then run tar normally tar -xf large_archive.tar 5.1 PowerShell Usage # Invoke tar from PowerShell & tar.exe -czf backup.tgz "C:\Projects" Using pipeline (list files to archive) Get-ChildItem -Path .\src -Recurse | ForEach-Object $_.FullName | tar -czf src.tgz -T - 5.2 Task Scheduler Automation Create an XML task to run weekly backup: tar for windows
tar --version Expected output: tar (GNU tar) 1.32 or higher. | Tool / Method | Archive Format |
choco install tar # or choco install gnuwin32-tar Prepared by Systems Engineering For internal distribution and technical reference. # From WSL Bash, call Windows tar tar
<Exec> <Command>tar</Command> <Arguments>-czf D:\backups\weekly-%date%.tgz C:\inetpub\wwwroot</Arguments> </Exec> Note: Use %date:/=-% to avoid slashes in filename. # From WSL Bash, call Windows tar tar.exe -czf /mnt/c/backup.tar.gz /mnt/c/Users/MyUser Windows tar can read Linux symlinks (preserved if run as admin) 6. Performance Benchmarks Test environment: Windows 11 Pro, 32 GB RAM, NVMe SSD, 10,000 mixed files (2.3 GB total).