Windows NT Does Not Support TAR or COMPRESS for FTP Transfers

This article was previously published under Q104491

If you download files with FTP from a UNIX or Internet server, the files may be in tape archive (TAR) format, which is a storage method that saves disk space. These files will not be usable unless they are restored to their native format.

Both TAR and COMPRESS are standard utilities for concatenating files and compressing files for storage on UNIX systems. They also provide the facilities to restore files to their native format.

Windows NT does not include either the TAR or Compress utilities; however, they are available through several sources including several different anonymous FTP sites on the Internet.

TAR files can be processed using the PAX command that ships with Windows NT.

NOTE: You cannot use PKUNZIP to uncompress a file compressed by the UNIX COMPRESS utility.