Pieced TAR backup

[skunkboy]

Being on a 5meg connection, I still have issues downloading a backup. My question....

I'm currently using: tar -cvjf [filename].tar.bz2 ./directory

I know about: split -b680m [filename].tar.bz2 [splitfile prefix]

I know with *nix it's possible then to run: cat [splitfile prefix]* > [filename].tar.bz2 to rebuild the file elsewhere

BUT... what could I do to have a split file config straight from tar? The issue is that I need to download and then rebuild on a Win machine (my laptop) because the *nix box I had, that I would just expand it on, now has a failed hard drive. Sure, I had a *nix box but only for storage; I'm not a guru by any means. Windows is having issues (either because of filesize or just the risk of issues downloading as big of a file as I'm needing) no matter what I try - winrar or 7zip opening the 5gb file in question.

[eWebtricity]

Won't WinRAR handle split files and put them back together. I see this all the time in NNTP newsgroups for binary attachments.

[C-4 Hosting]

Yes.. WinRAR does this... Might be a good solutions for what your looking to do. Maybe break up the files in 5 different ones... 1 gig each :)

[skunkboy]

I tried the split command on a smaller tar file and no luck then rebuilding it in windows - even with Winrar.

split -b50m site2.tar.bz2 site2

I tried it on a smaller site within the server so that I wouldn't waste three hours downloading the 5gb that's mainly in question but still, three 50m files and a 2m file - winrar didn't have a clue. I tried renaming them to .001(002,003...).rar and .r00(r01, r02...) but to no avail.

[skunkboy]

Solution: Split-Tar script
http://aklabs.net/?page_id=61

[C-4 Hosting]

Solution: Split-Tar script
http://aklabs.net/?page_id=61

You were able to successfully take the 5 Gig file, create several tar's with it, then bring it back into one 5 gig file and have it work on windows with this script????

[skunkboy]

you "can" break apart an existing tar but I've not tried it - what it does instead is what I was looking for to begin with - it'll create limited sized tars from your files. Instead of running tar, run split-tar and you can set the filesize based on k m or g. Then there's no piecing together ... it's a backup of everything but in smaller tars at a time.