Linux TAR split archive file
File type: Archive and compressed file
Files with the taraa file extension are the first parts of split archives created by the TAR archiving utility on Linux and Unix systems.
A TARAA file contains part of a TAR archive and must be used with the remaining parts to recover the archived data.
File type category:
Archive and compressed file
Date updated: October 30, 2026
The taraa file extension is associated with TAR, the standard archiving utility used on Linux and Unix systems. A TARAA file contains the first part of a TAR archive split into sequential files. The following parts normally use the extensions TARAB, TARAC, TARAD and so on.
All parts are required to reconstruct and extract the archive. For example, the following command creates 100 MB pieces from a TAR stream:
tar -cf - movie.avi | split -b 100m - movie.tar
The parts can be combined and passed to TAR for extraction with cat movie.tara* | tar x.
On Linux or Unix, place all parts in the same directory and make sure they are in their original sequence. Extract the archive by running cat movie.tara* | tar x in a shell, replacing the filename pattern as needed.
A TARAA file cannot normally be opened by itself because it contains only the first part of the split archive.
There is no useful direct conversion of an individual TARAA file. First concatenate all parts in order to recreate the complete TAR archive, for example with cat movie.tara* > movie.tar, and then use TAR to extract the files.
The extracted files can be placed in another archive format with an appropriate archiving utility, but that is a new archive rather than a conversion of the TARAA file itself.
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