From the course: Linux Tips

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File system basics: Archives

File system basics: Archives - Linux Tutorial

From the course: Linux Tips

File system basics: Archives

- [Instructor] When we need to reduce the size of files, or to package them up together in order to store them or send them to someone else, we'll often use an archive. Archives come in two different types that are often thought of together. One kind of archive, called a tape archive, usually represented by a .tar file is a way of sticking a bunch of files together into one big unit. Compressed archives take that one file and use some clever math to make it smaller. Let's take a look at both. TAR files are common in the Linux world, and they have a long history. As I mentioned, TAR is short for tape archive. Historically, and even to a large extent today, important information was backed up on tape media, which is physically compact and can store a large amount of data. In order to store files on a tape, a system needs to know where on a tape particular files are, and those files need to get written onto a tape in a linear fashion. In order to do this, the tape archive format takes a…

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