Tool to unzip tar file in Windows Operating System? – 7-Zip

I am a webmaster. My hosting agency is HostGator.com. Everyday I am taking regular backup of my website using their backup facilities. I noticed for backup they generates a file with tar.gz extension. One day I suddenly found due to some accidental delete few records get deleted from my database. What to do next? Wop let me restore my previous backup.

I downloaded the backup file with extension tar.gz. Now to restore my database I need the sql file. Which locates inside the tar.gz file. I tried many methods using windows to unzip the backup tar.gz file but sorry to say windows can’t help me. I asked few of my friends “How to unzip tar.gz file in windows?”. Few of them suggest me that tar.gz is a linux format file system. To unzip this I need a linux machine.

Finally, I can’t satisfied with their answers. How can it possible? There must be some ways. Then I shared the same question in Yahoo Answer. Wop. My Good luck one of the technical member get back to me with the following answer.

Windows itself not supports tar.gz file to unzip. You have to use one third party zip unzip tool. Please take a look into 7-zip (Open source Windows utility for manipulating archives).

Followed by the above answer I searched 7-zip in Google & found the link http://www.7-zip.org. Downloaded the 7-zip app. Installed it in my Windows machine. Then selected my tar.gz file, right click on it followed by the trick of other unzip tools. Great, I found an option 7-zip in my dialog. On mouse over it show me option to convert tar.gz to tar.

Keep remember during we apply multiple zip for any file we can unzip the file in reverse sequence. I mean tar & gz are two zip formats. To get the unzip version of tar.gz file we need to first convert tar.gz to tar file. Then tar file to normal.

So using 7-zip I able to convert my tar.gz file to tar file now I repeat the same procedure. Right click on the tar file & found the option to extract tar file to normal. Did this & thanks 7-zip I got my files. Selected the sql file & uploaded it to the backup management system of HostGator. Issue get fixed. Now my site is live again. You may face the same issue that’s why feel free to share this story.