How to zip folder that contains more than 12GB data

I have a requirement to zip a folder which contains large number of files. When I tried to zip in command li开发者_JAVA技巧ne, it is showing zip error: Input file read failure

I searched net and found "The .ZIP file format, only handles file lengths that can be contained in a 32-bit integer." If so, then it must be the cause of the error I got, because my folder size is more than 12GB. Is there any way to extend the file size to be zipped. Or is there another way to solve this?

I am using CENTOS 5.

Thanks.

You can use tar for that.

Just try:

$tar -cvzf compress.tgz /path/to/your/data

and to extract it:

$tar -xvzf compress.tgz

GZip can handle any size that your file system can handle. You might want to first "tar" the content to one file, unsing the GnuTar you can use the z option to do the compression in one go.

7Zip is also a good alternative to ZIP. It is ported to many platforms and the size limits are much higher.