Fastest way to extract tar.gz

Solution 1:

pigz is a parallel version of gzip. Although it only uses a single thread for decompression, it starts 3 additional threads for reading, writing, and check calculation. Your results may vary but we have seen significant improvement in decompression of some of our data sets. Once you install pigz the tar file can be extracted with:

pigz -dc target.tar.gz | tar xf -

Solution 2:

if there are many many many small files in the tar ball, cancel the ‘v’ parameter, try again!

Solution 3:

If you want to see progress use something like pv. Here is an Example:

pigz -dc mysql-binary-backup.tar.gz | pv | tar xf -