Reading from a .tgz takes a long long time

[Merciadri Luca <Luca.Merciadri@student.ulg.ac.be>]

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Hello folks,

I use tar to make (not necessarily incremental) backups of my /etc/*,
/home/*, and other important folders. I am encountering a problem:
reading a file in a .tgz takes a really long time. I use the
Archive Manager GUI (of GNOME) to go through all the folders of my
.tgz. My archive is ~5 Gigs.

For example, let's say that I want to read my old /etc/fstab in my
.tgz. It takes something like 10 min to open it. The external HDD
where the .tgz is saved is connected through USB2 (same problem with
firewire) and other tasks are performed in a reasonable amount of
time.

Any ideas?

Thanks.
- -- 
Merciadri Luca
See http://www.student.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~merciadri/
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