10 MB TAR sample file

A TAR file of exactly 10,485,760 bytes. It is a valid Tape archive file, generated for this site and checked with an independent parser.

sample-tar-10mb.tar

10 MB10,485,760 bytes

Download 10 MB TAR

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Type: application/x-tar
SHA-256: 93aa51f4db2f2d2cf22d1823d569031080727f9479e65a95dd4b1f944ac50bb7
Direct URL: https://sampletestfiles.com/downloads/tar/sample-tar-10mb.tar

What is in this file

A ustar archive with a README and payload.bin, 10,483,200 pseudo-random bytes, followed by the two zero blocks that end every tar archive.

Entries	2 (README.txt, payload.bin)
Format	POSIX ustar
Compression	None
Block size	512 bytes

First bytes of the file

The first 64 bytes of sample-tar-10mb.tar as a hex dump: offset, bytes, then the same bytes as text. The TAR signature is 75 73 74 61 72 at offset 257.

00000000  52 45 41 44 4d 45 2e 74 78 74 00 00 00 00 00 00  |README.txt......|
00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000030  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|

Preview

TAR files cannot be shown in a browser. Download the file and open it with tar on Linux, macOS and Windows.

Where 10 MB matters

A 10,485,760-byte file: over the default limits of PHP, API Gateway and Spring Boot requests. These are the default limits a file of this size is useful for testing:

System	Limit	Note
Amazon API Gateway	10 MB payload	A 10 MB file in a multipart or base64 body is over the limit.
Spring Boot multipart	10 MB per request by default (max-request-size)	Exceeded once form overhead is added.
PHP	8 MB POST body by default (post_max_size)	Rejected before the script runs.
Amazon S3 multipart upload	5 MiB minimum part size	This file splits into exactly two minimum-sized parts.
Email attachments	Commonly 20 to 25 MB per message	10 MB fits, at about 13.3 MB once encoded.

All 10 MB sample files

Use this file for

Exercising chunked and resumable uploads
Testing archive extraction on servers
Checking backup and deployment tooling

Testing notes for TAR

There is no index, so listing the contents means reading the whole archive.
Like ZIP, tar entries can contain absolute paths or "../", and can be symbolic links. Validate before extracting.

TAR format reference

Technical details

File name	sample-tar-10mb.tar
Format	TAR (Tape archive)
Extension	.tar
MIME type	application/x-tar
Size	10,485,760 bytes (10 MB)
Kind	Binary
Signature	75 73 74 61 72 at offset 257
SHA-256	93aa51f4db2f2d2cf22d1823d569031080727f9479e65a95dd4b1f944ac50bb7
Created	2026-10-10
Validation	Exact size, signature bytes and structure checked when the file was generated
Preview	Not available for this format; details only
Source	Generated for this site; not copied from elsewhere
Licence	Free to use, modify and redistribute (terms)
Category	Archives

Validated for expected format and integrity. As with any download, scan the file with your own security tools before opening it. How files are made and checked

Download from the command line and verify

Fetch the file with curl, then compare its checksum with the SHA-256 value above.

curl -o sample-tar-10mb.tar 'https://sampletestfiles.com/downloads/tar/sample-tar-10mb.tar'
sha256sum sample-tar-10mb.tar     # Linux
shasum -a 256 sample-tar-10mb.tar # macOS

On Windows, run Get-FileHash sample-tar-10mb.tar -Algorithm SHA256 in PowerShell. A matching value proves that the download is complete and unaltered.

Related files

Questions about this file

Is this file exactly 10 MB?: Yes. It is 10,485,760 bytes, which is 10 MB in the binary units that operating systems and server limits use (1 KB = 1,024 bytes).
What is inside the 10 MB TAR file?: A ustar archive with a README and payload.bin, 10,483,200 pseudo-random bytes, followed by the two zero blocks that end every tar archive.
Why is there no 1 KB TAR sample?: A tar archive is built from 512-byte blocks and ends with two empty blocks, so the smallest archive containing a README and a payload is larger than 1 KB.

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