1 MB TAR sample file
A TAR file of exactly 1,048,576 bytes. It is a valid Tape archive file, generated for this site and checked with an independent parser.
Download
sample-tar-1mb.tar
1 MB1,048,576 bytes
Download 1 MB TARDirect download. No sign-up and no waiting.
- Type
- application/x-tar
- SHA-256
5310bd88e19bf648361bc4695c316e9002ede8761178e348b133a4c2af6571d7- Direct URL
https://sampletestfiles.com/downloads/tar/sample-tar-1mb.tar
What is in this file
A ustar archive with a README and payload.bin, 1,046,016 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-1mb.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 1 MB matters
A 1,048,576-byte file: exactly the default upload limit of nginx, Spring Boot and Next.js. These are the default limits a file of this size is useful for testing:
| System | Limit | Note |
|---|---|---|
| nginx | 1 MB by default (client_max_body_size) | A multipart upload of this file exceeds the limit by the size of the form boundaries. |
| Spring Boot multipart | 1 MB per file by default (max-file-size) | A file of exactly 1 MB is at the limit. |
| Next.js API routes and Server Actions | 1 MB by default | Larger bodies need the size limit raised in configuration. |
| Cloud Firestore documents | 1 MiB (1,048,576 bytes) | The same number of bytes as this file. |
| Apache Kafka messages | About 1 MB by default | Brokers reject larger records unless message.max.bytes is raised. |
Use this file for
- Download tests on mobile connections
- Checking backup and deployment tooling
- Testing container and package pipelines
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.
Technical details
| File name | sample-tar-1mb.tar |
|---|---|
| Format | TAR (Tape archive) |
| Extension | .tar |
| MIME type | application/x-tar |
| Size | 1,048,576 bytes (1 MB) |
| Kind | Binary |
| Signature | 75 73 74 61 72 at offset 257 |
| SHA-256 | 5310bd88e19bf648361bc4695c316e9002ede8761178e348b133a4c2af6571d7 |
| 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-1mb.tar 'https://sampletestfiles.com/downloads/tar/sample-tar-1mb.tar'
sha256sum sample-tar-1mb.tar # Linux
shasum -a 256 sample-tar-1mb.tar # macOSOn Windows, run Get-FileHash sample-tar-1mb.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 1 MB?
- Yes. It is 1,048,576 bytes, which is 1 MB in the binary units that operating systems and server limits use (1 KB = 1,024 bytes).
- What is inside the 1 MB TAR file?
- A ustar archive with a README and payload.bin, 1,046,016 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.