How to Compress and Split Files in Ubuntu

Damien — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:49:43 +0000

In Ubuntu, the Archive Manager (or file-roller) has make it easy for anyone to compress and zip up a file or folder, but if you have a large file, say 20Gb, and you want to back it up to the CD/DVD, you will find that no amount of compression can you reduce the file size to fit into 1 CD/DVD. In such case, it is a better solution to compress and split the large file into several smaller files and store them separately. This also applies if you want to share a large file on a file-sharing site. Splitting the compressed file into several smaller files will make it easier for others to download.

Let’s say that the large file is a movie file found in /home/username/movie/large-file.avi and you want to compress, split and store the smaller files at the folder /home/username/movie/split-flies/, this is what you type in the terminal:

cd movie/split-files (change the filepath to where you want to keep the split files)
tar -cvj /home/username/movie/large-files.avi | split -b 650m -d – “large-files.tar.bz.”

You will now see several files appearing at the split-files folder, each with file size of 650MB and with filenames large-files.tar.bz.00, large-files.tar.bz.01, large-files.tar.bz.02, etc.

To recover and extract the split files, type

cat large-files.tar.bz.* > large-files.tar.bz
tar -xvj large-file.tar.bz

and you can get the original file back.

Do you know of any other ways to compress and split files in Ubuntu?

How to Compress and Split Files in Ubuntu originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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How to Compress and Split Files in Ubuntu