CPANEL backup TAR.GZ uncompresses under UNIX but not under W

It's possibly choking on the size of the archive. You could try zipping it up on Linux, then transferring it to Windows that way.

Is your windows system using FAT32 by any chance?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileAllocationTable
> The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GiB minus 1 byte (2^32-1 bytes).

Others have hit the likely cause: The archive is probably too big for Windows to handle on a FAT32 filesystem. I would double check that you're using the latest version of the software you're trying to extract it with, though, just to be sure – if it's more than a few years old, it's possible it can't handle >2 or >4GB files regardless of whether you're using FAT32 or NTFS.

I wanted to clarify something else for you, though:

@linodevirgin:

I dont know why they put 1 TAR inside another TAR.

They don't. .tar.gz isn't one extension – it's two. This is a "gzipped tarball".

tar is an uncompressed archive format originating when the primary way of moving lots of data around was magnetic tape (tape archive). These days, in practice, it doesn't do very much besides copy the contents of all your files into one big file, usually with the extension ".tar".

Then a compression program – typically gzip (.gz) or bzip2 (.bz2) -- is used to compress that file (though typically on-the-fly, rather than writing out a .tar and then compressing it separately).

From the perspective of winzip/winrar/7zip, what you've got is a tar file inside a gzip file, and that's exactly how they present it. It's not very user-friendly, but it's technically correct.

I am using NTFS.

I think its a thing from CPANEL. They upgraded to CPANEL 11 and it does that from now on when creating backups.

I know after I decompress the .GZ I get the TAR, but then inside that TAR there is all these directories (bandwidth, counters, cp, dnszones, mysql, etc, etc) from cpanel and something called homedir.tar

homedir.tar suppose contain all my html files. It appears as 5GIGs. 5 GIGS should be OK with NTFS

This homedir.tar is what craps out in Vista or Win2K (Yes I use a dinosaur) however it seems fine under Unix.

Also if I open homedir.tar in WINRAR first thing I notice is a directory named "." (without the quotes) I can go inside that directory, it has two directories and its missing all my html. Their suppose to be at that level.

I read somewhere something about CPANEL upgrade that does this in an improper way. Not sure what I should be more mad at, CPANEL or WINDOWS :)

I used to run into the Windows crapping out on tarballs all the time at work, then I was able to run Linux as my Corp Workstation, solved the problems 8)

Anyway you'll run into a number of issues with extracting Unix and Linux tarballs on NTFS, easiest route to go is if possible keep it on a *nix box ;)

You could try GNU tar/bzip2/gzip:

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/