How to split .zip files and join them in Windows?

On Ubuntu you can use the split command to split your zip file. Something like this should work:

split your-zip.zip -b 32M ZIPCHUNKS

This will create a bunch of ZIPCHUNKS* files, in order, and all 32 MB or less in size. Change the 32M parameter to vary the chunk size.

Traditionally you'd use cat to glue them back together:

cat ZIPCHUNKS* > reassembled-zip.zip

Since you want to do the reassembling on Windows, you need a substitute for cat. Is there replacement for cat on Windows may help, but note that the Windows type command will not work as it adds the files names between them when processing more than one file. One working approach is copy /b ZIPCHUNKS* > reassembled-zip.zip.

You can also use rar which natively supports creating "split" archives which can then be decompressed by a GUI tool on Windows such as WinZip or WinRar. On Ubuntu, install the rar package, then:

rar a -v32M destination.rar files/to/compress

This will create files called destination.partXX.rar. Transfer these to Windows, then unrar the first one (destination.rar), which will link to the others automatically.

One trick you can potentially use is to "rar" the original zip file, that way you can reassemble it on Windows. If you have the original files, it may be easier to just rar them and work with that.


Use zip command with -s split_size to compress files. The example command is following.

zip -r -s 100m filename.zip  compress_folder

Very easy: you first do split your-zip.zip -b 32M ZIPCHUNKS in Linux/Unix and then type * > myZipFile.zip in Windows.