TZ2 to TB2 Converter

How to Convert TZ2 to TB2 Online

1. Upload Your TZ2 File: Drag and drop or click "+ Add Files" to load one or more .tz2 archives. Batch uploads are supported — drop a folder of .tz2 mirror downloads and rename them all in one pass. Files stay on our servers, deleted from our servers automatically after a few hours.
2. Pick Combine Mode: Under "Combine?" choose Individual Archives (the default for archive input) to produce one .tb2 per input .tz2 — the right choice when you just need each file renamed for a tool that rejects the .tz2 alias. Pick Single Archive instead if you want to unpack all uploaded .tz2 files and re-pack their combined contents into one merged .tb2.
3. Review the Output Extension: The output is written with .tb2. Because .tz2 and .tb2 are both aliases for .tar.bz2, the underlying bytes are unchanged when you pick Individual Archives — the file is the same tar-bzip2 stream, just with a different filename. GNU tar autodetects the format from the bzip2 magic bytes (BZh), so tar -xf archive.tb2 and tar -xf archive.tz2 behave identically on Linux and macOS.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. No account, no watermark, no email. Each archive's contents — filenames, directory structure, POSIX modes, symlinks, and modification times — are preserved exactly as they were inside the original .tz2.

Why Convert TZ2 to TB2?

.tz2 and .tb2 are two of several short aliases for a tar archive compressed with bzip2 (canonical name .tar.bz2). The bytes inside are identical — both extensions describe a tar stream wrapped by bzip2's Burrows–Wheeler Transform plus Huffman coding on 100–900 KB blocks. So why rename? Because some tools, package managers, and build pipelines accept only specific extension spellings. Typical scenarios:

• Tool or build-script compatibility — Older Makefiles, RPM/DEB spec files, and CI pipelines sometimes hard-code *.tb2 or *.tar.bz2 and refuse to recognize the rarer .tz2. Converting to .tb2 is the lowest-friction fix when you can't edit the script.
• Mirror and CDN naming conventions — Sourceforge, kernel.org, and many Linux distribution mirrors standardize on a single extension across releases; if their tooling expects .tb2, a .tz2 upload may be silently skipped from the directory index.
• Cross-platform handoffs — Windows 11 File Explorer extracts .tar.bz2, .tb2, and .tbz2 from its right-click "Extract All" menu (added in the 2023 update that bundled libarchive), but its handling of the less common .tz2 alias is less reliable. Renaming to .tb2 makes the archive obvious to non-Linux recipients.
• Documentation and download-page consistency — README files and release notes typically reference .tar.bz2 or .tb2 as the bzip2 variant; matching that name in your release artifacts avoids confused-user emails.
• Round-tripping through tools that lose the original name — Some upload forms, web filters, or email gateways strip uncommon extensions. Repacking as .tb2 (or the canonical .tar.bz2) survives more gateways.
• Combining multiple .tz2 files — Switch the Combine mode to Single Archive to unpack several .tz2 files and merge their contents into one .tb2 release tarball. Same convention tar itself uses: when two inputs contain the same path, the later one wins.

Need a different compression algorithm instead of a rename? Try TZ2 to tar.gz for faster extraction, TZ2 to tar.xz for tighter compression, or TZ2 to ZIP for Windows-native compatibility. To unpack a .tz2 instead of re-wrapping it, use Extract TZ2.

TZ2 vs TB2 vs Other tar.bz2 Aliases — Same Bytes, Different Spelling

All five hold a tar stream compressed with bzip2. The conversion from .tz2 to .tb2 rewrites the filename, not the contents.

tar.bz2 vs Related Archive Formats

Frequently Asked Questions

Is .tz2 actually different from .tb2?

No — both are aliases for a tar archive compressed with bzip2. The file's magic bytes (BZh at offset 0) identify it as bzip2, and any modern tar implementation autodetects that regardless of the filename. Renaming archive.tz2 to archive.tb2 on the command line produces an identical, working archive. The xconvert converter does the same thing in the Individual Archives mode — it copies the bytes through with the new extension. The Single Archive mode is different: it actually unpacks each input and re-tars/re-compresses the merged contents, so the output bytes differ from any individual input.

Why does my tool reject .tz2 but accept .tb2?

A handful of tools and scripts pattern-match on the extension instead of inspecting magic bytes. RPM spec files, older Makefiles, web upload filters, and some package-manager indexers fall into this group. The .tz2 alias is rarer than .tb2 or .tar.bz2, so it's the most common spelling to get missed by hard-coded allowlists. Converting to .tb2 (or .tar.bz2) is the fix when you can't edit the consuming tool.

Will the converted TB2 be smaller than the TZ2?

If you pick Individual Archives, no — the bytes are identical, only the filename changes, so the size is unchanged to the byte. If you pick Single Archive to merge multiple inputs, the output bzip2 stream sees all the merged tar contents at once and may compress slightly better than the sum of inputs because bzip2 finds patterns spanning across what were originally separate files. For text-heavy payloads (source code, configs, logs) the merge-mode savings can be 5–15%; for already-compressed payloads (JPEG, MP4, MP3) the difference is near zero.

Can I extract a .tb2 file on Windows without installing anything?

Yes on Windows 11, since the late-2023 File Explorer update that added libarchive-based support for .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, and similar formats — right-click → "Extract All" works directly. On Windows 10 (1803 and later), Microsoft bundled a tar.exe command-line tool that handles tar -xf archive.tb2 from PowerShell or cmd.exe. On older Windows, 7-Zip, WinRAR, and PeaZip all extract .tb2 natively.

Does the conversion preserve POSIX permissions and symlinks?

Yes. Tar (the inner format) records Unix file modes, owner/group IDs, symbolic links, hard links, and modification times. Since both .tz2 and .tb2 wrap the same tar format, none of that metadata is touched by the rename. If the original .tz2 was created on Windows or by a tool that didn't capture POSIX bits, the converter can't restore information that wasn't there — but it won't strip anything either.

How do I extract a .tb2 file on Linux or macOS?

Run tar -xf archive.tb2 from the terminal. The -x flag means extract, -f specifies the file. Older GNU tar versions required an explicit -j flag for bzip2 (tar -xjf), but every GNU tar release since 2004 and BSD tar since macOS 10.5 autodetects compression from the bzip2 magic bytes — the flag is no longer needed. To list contents without extracting, use tar -tf archive.tb2.

Why is bzip2 slower than gzip if it compresses better?

Bzip2 uses the Burrows–Wheeler Transform on blocks between 100 and 900 KB, which is computationally heavier than gzip's sliding-window LZ77+Huffman approach. Compression runs roughly 3–5× slower than gzip and decompression 2–3× slower. For one-time downloads where bandwidth matters more than CPU, the trade-off is worth it; for continuously read archives (like rotating logs) or build artifacts you'll extract dozens of times a day, gzip's speed usually wins. If you need the speed of gzip, use TZ2 to tar.gz instead.

Is there a file size limit on this converter?

xconvert processes archives on our servers without uploading to a permanent server, and there is no hard cap published for TZ2-to-TB2 conversions. file size limits depend on your upload bandwidth and our server-imposed quota. In Individual Archives mode the converter mostly streams bytes through, so even multi-gigabyte archives are feasible. Single Archive mode unpacks and re-compresses, which takes more memory and CPU; expect noticeable processing time on archives of 1 GB+ because of bzip2's compute cost.

Can I go back from .tb2 to .tz2?

Yes. Use TB2 to TZ2 to flip the extension back. Because both are aliases for .tar.bz2, the round trip in Individual Archives mode preserves the original bytes exactly. If you need the inverse with a different output format, Extract TB2 unpacks the archive directly, and ZIP to TB2 handles ZIP-to-bzip2 packing.