Before extracting a large cPanel backup, make sure the destination has enough free disk space for both the compressed archive and the expanded files.
- Keep the original
.tar.gzunchanged. - Extract into a new folder rather than mixing backup data with live website files.
- Do not upload the entire extracted archive into
public_html. - Recover only the specific website, database, email, or configuration data you actually need.
On systems with command-line tools, tar -tvf archive.tar.gz can list an archive's contents without extracting it. A graphical archive utility can also be used when it supports gzip-compressed tar files.
