| 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 |
tar --version Expected output: tar (GNU tar) 1.32 or higher. tar for windows
:: 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: | Tool / Method | Archive Format |