TB2 to RAR Converter

How to Convert TB2 to RAR Online

1. Upload Your TB2 File: Drag and drop or click "+ Add Files" to load one or more .tb2 archives from your device. Batch is supported — queue several TB2 files at once.
2. Pick the Combine Mode: Choose Single Archive (default) to merge every uploaded TB2 into one .rar, or Individual Archives to produce a separate .rar per uploaded file. With one TB2 in, this just controls whether the output is a single .rar or a per-file batch.
3. Review the File List (Optional): Remove any items uploaded by mistake. The conversion is server-backed because RAR writing is licensed — your TB2 is decompressed and the contained files are re-packed into a RAR5 archive.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and download the resulting .rar. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark, never shared.

Why Convert TB2 to RAR?

.tb2 is a short-form extension for tar archives compressed with bzip2 (the long form is .tar.bz2, with .tbz2 and .tbz as other variants). The format is common on older Linux software-distribution mirrors and source-tarball uploads because bzip2 was the de-facto Unix compressor through the 2000s. RAR is a proprietary archive format created by Eugene Roshal in 1993; the current spec (RAR 5.0) ships in WinRAR 5.0+ (April 2013) and is widely used in Windows-centric workflows.

Converting TB2 to RAR makes sense when:

• You're sending the archive to a Windows recipient on Windows 10 or earlier — Windows 10 cannot open .tb2 natively without 7-Zip or WinRAR, and many users won't install one. A .rar lands in a more familiar shape, especially if they already have WinRAR.
• You need RAR's recovery record — RAR5 includes a Reed-Solomon recovery record that can repair a small amount of bit-rot in transit; .tar.bz2 has no integrity-repair facility, only CRC checks that tell you the archive is broken without helping you fix it.
• The recipient asked for RAR specifically — gaming mod sites (Nexus Mods, ModDB), older corporate file-exchange portals, and some torrent uploaders default to RAR. Repackaging a Linux source tarball into RAR avoids the recipient having to install bzip2 tools.
• You want random-access into the archive — bzip2-compressed tar has no central index, so extracting a single file requires streaming the whole archive. RAR5 has a Quick Open Information block that lets extractors jump to a chosen file without decompressing the rest.
• You're consolidating multiple .tb2 source tarballs into a single deliverable — pick Single Archive to flatten several Linux source tarballs into one .rar for a Windows colleague reviewing the codebase. RAR5's 32 MB default dictionary often yields a slightly smaller container than re-running bzip2 on the same input.

Need a different output instead? Convert TB2 to a ZIP archive for universal compatibility, a 7z archive for the tightest free-format compression, or strip the bzip2 layer with TB2 to TAR. To recompress an existing .rar, use Compress RAR.

TB2 (tar.bz2) vs RAR — Format Comparison

RAR4 vs RAR5 — Which Spec You're Getting

This converter produces RAR5 archives (the WinRAR default since version 5.0, April 2013). RAR4 exists only as a compatibility switch for pre-2014 extractors.

Only fall back to RAR4 if you know the recipient runs a pre-2014 extractor; everyone else benefits from RAR5's stronger checksum, encryption, and dictionary.

Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly is a .tb2 file, and is it different from .tar.bz2 or .tbz2?

.tb2, .tbz2, .tbz, and .tar.bz2 all describe the same thing: a TAR archive that was compressed with bzip2. The short forms exist because some old file systems and DOS-era tools could not handle compound extensions like .tar.bz2. Every modern extractor (WinRAR, 7-Zip, PeaZip, tar, Windows 11 22H2+ Explorer) treats all four extensions identically — they sniff the bzip2 magic bytes (BZh) at offset 0 and decompress regardless of what the filename says. This converter accepts the .tb2 extension specifically but the byte stream inside is standard tar+bzip2.

Why would I convert when Windows 11 already opens .tb2 natively?

You wouldn't, if every recipient is on Windows 11 22H2 (Sept 2023) or newer — libarchive added native support for .rar, .7z, .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.zst, .tar.xz, .tgz, .tbz2, .tzst, and .txz in that release. The conversion is worth doing when your recipient is on Windows 10 (which is still ~30% of the desktop Windows base in 2026 and has no native .tb2 support), on a corporate Windows image with archive extensions locked down, or on a workflow that explicitly expects .rar as the input format. For technical Linux/macOS recipients, sending the original .tb2 is usually fine.

Will the internal folder structure of the tar archive be preserved?

Yes. The converter decompresses bzip2, reads the tar entries (which carry relative paths and Unix permissions), and writes each entry into the RAR5 archive with the same path. If your TB2 contains src/lib/util.c, the resulting RAR contains src/lib/util.c. One caveat: tar can store symlinks, hardlinks, character/block device nodes, and Unix permission bits (rwx + sticky/setuid); RAR5 stores symlinks and a Windows-style attributes byte but cannot represent the full POSIX permission set. Files round-trip fine; permission bits will be approximated on extract.

Can I password-protect the RAR with AES-256?

RAR5 supports AES-256 with encrypted file names, but the xconvert web UI does not currently surface a password field on this page. If you need an encrypted RAR, convert here and re-pack with a password using WinRAR (Windows), the rar command-line tool (macOS/Linux), or PeaZip. If your goal is privacy in transit, the simpler path is to encrypt the original TB2 with GPG (gpg -c file.tb2) before uploading — the server never sees the cleartext that way.

Why is my RAR roughly the same size as the TB2?

Because bzip2 already produced a tight compression stream. The converter has to fully decompress the tar payload before RAR5 can re-pack it, and RAR5 on uncompressed input typically lands within a few percent of bzip2's output on the same data. RAR5 wins on long-range redundancy (large repeated blocks within a 32 MB window); bzip2 wins on small-block text. Net result: roughly equivalent size, give or take 5%. If you specifically want a smaller archive, try TB2 to 7z — LZMA2 with a large dictionary often beats both.

Can I split the output RAR into multiple volumes (part1.rar, part2.rar)?

Multi-volume splitting is a desktop-WinRAR feature and is not exposed in the current xconvert web flow. If you need volumes (e.g., to fit each part under a 25 MB Gmail attachment cap or a 10 MB Discord free-tier limit), build the single .rar here, then in WinRAR pick "Add to archive" → "Split to volumes, size" with a value like 25M. All .part01.rar, .part02.rar, … files must be present in the same folder for extraction.

Does converting TB2 to RAR lose any data?

No. Both formats are lossless container/compressor combinations — every byte of every file inside is preserved exactly. The only thing that may not survive a round trip is metadata that one format can store and the other cannot: extended POSIX permissions, ACLs, and certain Unix file types (device nodes, FIFOs) exist in tar but not in RAR5. Regular files, directories, symlinks, modification timestamps, and the file contents themselves are byte-perfect on the other side.

Are my files private?

Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on xconvert's servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. No account, no watermarks, and no per-day count limit. RAR writing is server-backed (the RAR packer is a licensed binary that runs on xconvert's infrastructure), so keep that in mind if the contents are sensitive. For highly sensitive payloads, encrypt the TB2 locally with GPG before uploading and let the server see only ciphertext.

Should I just send the original .tb2 instead?

For Linux or macOS recipients, almost always yes — they have tar -xjf file.tb2 built in. For Windows 11 22H2+ recipients, yes — Explorer opens .tb2 natively. Convert to RAR only when the recipient is on Windows 10/older, asked for RAR specifically, or runs a workflow that expects RAR as input. If you're not sure which Windows version they're on, TB2 to ZIP is the safer universal choice because ZIP has been natively supported in Windows since XP (2001).