Compress and Extract Entire Directory Tree With Tar

(This assumes you are using tar in Linux or Cygwin.)

First, open a terminal/bash session.

Change to the root directory you want to compress, then issue this command:

tar -cvzf archive_name.tgz *

To extract the archive file, copy it to an empty directory, then issue this command:

tar -xvf archive_name.tgz