Does this file format exist?

Posted by Jon Chase on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Jon Chase
Published on 2012-11-29T04:19:48Z Indexed on 2012/11/29 5:08 UTC
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Is there a file format that handles the following use case...

I'd like to create a tar file (or whatever - I'm just using tar here b/c it's a well known file format for containing multiple files) that would be usable even if I only had access to specific chunks of said file.

For example, say I tar up my mp3 and photo collection into a 100GB tar file, then put the file into some long term storage somewhere. Later, I want to access a specific mp3 file. I don't want to download the entire 100GB tar file just to get to one mp3. In fact, let's say I can't download the entire 100GB tar file. Instead, I'd like to say "give me megabytes 10 through 19 of the 100GB tar file" and then have the mp3 magically extracted from those 10 megabytes.

Does a file format like this exist?

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