RAR to TB2 Converter

Convert RAR to TB2 Online

Turn a proprietary RARLAB .rar archive into a .tb2 file — a tar archive compressed with bzip2, written with the short single-extension name instead of the longer .tar.bz2. The conversion is lossless: your RAR is extracted and its files are repacked into a bzip2 tarball, so Unix paths, permissions, and ownership survive the swap. The .tb2 you get is byte-for-byte the same kind of file as .tar.bz2 or .tbz2, just spelled with the legacy short extension that some older DOS and Windows archivers expected.

How to Convert RAR to TB2

1. Upload Your RAR File: Drag and drop your .rar archive onto the page, or click "+ Add Files" to pick it from your computer. You can queue several archives at once.
2. Choose Single Archive or Individual Archives: Under the Combine? control, keep "Single Archive" to pack everything into one .tb2, or pick "Individual Archives" to get a separate .tb2 per input file.
3. Leave the defaults or adjust in Advanced Options: The defaults produce a standard bzip2 tarball that any tar build can read — only open Advanced Options if you need to change how files are combined.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save your .tb2 file. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

.tb2 vs Other bzip2-Tarball Extensions

The .tb2, .tbz2, .tbz, and .tar.bz2 extensions all name the exact same container: a tar archive run through bzip2. They differ only in spelling and which tools expect them.

How bzip2 Compares to gzip and xz

bzip2 layers run-length encoding, the Burrows-Wheeler transform, move-to-front, and Huffman coding to squeeze tarballs smaller than gzip's Deflate, at the cost of being noticeably slower. xz (LZMA) usually compresses tighter still but slower again. If you want a different tradeoff, you can produce a .tar.xz archive instead, or use the long-extension .tar.bz2 page — it builds the identical format, just named differently.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is .tb2 the same as .tar.bz2?

Yes. .tb2 is just a shorter spelling of .tar.bz2 — both hold a tar archive compressed with bzip2. The bytes are identical; only the filename extension differs. Some old DOS and Windows archivers preferred the short 8.3-style .tb2 name because they could not handle the double .tar.bz2 extension.

How do I open a .tb2 file?

On Linux or macOS, run tar -xjf archive.tb2; the j flag tells tar to decompress bzip2. On Windows, 7-Zip and WinRAR both recognize .tb2. If a tool refuses the file because of the extension, rename it to archive.tar.bz2 — the contents do not change, only the name the tool reads.

Does converting RAR to TB2 lose any quality or data?

No. This is a lossless container swap. The RAR is extracted and its files are repacked into a bzip2 tarball, so every byte of every file is preserved. On Unix-origin archives, file paths, permissions, and ownership metadata carry through as well.

Why convert RAR to TB2 instead of keeping RAR?

RAR is a proprietary RARLAB format, and full RAR creation requires licensed tools, while .tb2 uses tar and bzip2 — open, patent-free, and built into virtually every Linux and macOS install. Repacking to .tb2 makes the archive easy to extract anywhere with the standard tar command and no third-party software.

Will a .tb2 file be smaller than the original RAR?

Not necessarily. RAR and bzip2 use different algorithms, so the result depends on your data. In our testing, repacking a mixed source-code RAR to .tb2 produced an archive within a few percent of the RAR's size — bzip2 trades some speed for a competitive ratio, but it is not guaranteed to beat RAR on every file type.

Can I convert several RAR archives at once?

Yes. Queue multiple .rar files in one upload. Keep "Single Archive" to merge all of their contents into one .tb2, or switch to "Individual Archives" to get a separate .tb2 for each input file.