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    As for the why: Compression efficiency. If you compress all data in one go, you achieve a higher compression ratio. Compressing every file individually could, especially with many small files, result in a result that is larger than the total input size.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 13:23
  • Then again, it seems sensible to give the user the option to choose between compression efficiency and access efficiency. I guess this makes sense since tar was intended for use with tapes -- however it still supports seekable archives!
    – Yuval
    Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 14:00