5 MB TAR sample file

A TAR file of exactly 5,242,880 bytes. It is a valid Tape archive file, generated for this site and checked with an independent parser.

sample-tar-5mb.tar

5 MB5,242,880 bytes

Download 5 MB TAR

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Type: application/x-tar
SHA-256: 8945e4748f5e52a966a8ddf379bd581b843f10b8a710054f91ea88a88590f390
Direct URL: https://sampletestfiles.com/downloads/tar/sample-tar-5mb.tar

What is in this file

A ustar archive with a README and payload.bin, 5,240,320 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-5mb.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 5 MB matters

A 5,242,880-byte file: the size of a phone photo and the minimum part size for S3 multipart uploads. These are the default limits a file of this size is useful for testing:

System	Limit	Note
PHP	2 MB per uploaded file by default (upload_max_filesize)	A 5 MB upload fails on an untuned PHP installation.
Vercel Functions	4.5 MB request body	Larger uploads must go directly to object storage.
Amazon S3 multipart upload	5 MiB minimum part size	This file is exactly one minimum part.
AWS Lambda	6 MB synchronous invocation payload	5 MB of binary data exceeds it once base64-encoded.
Browser localStorage	About 5 MB per origin	Storing this file as text fills the quota.
Django	2.5 MB in memory by default	Larger uploads are streamed to a temporary file instead of held in memory.

All 5 MB sample files

Use this file for

Simulating photo uploads from phones
Testing container and package pipelines
Testing archive extraction on servers

Testing notes for TAR

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

TAR format reference

Technical details

File name	sample-tar-5mb.tar
Format	TAR (Tape archive)
Extension	.tar
MIME type	application/x-tar
Size	5,242,880 bytes (5 MB)
Kind	Binary
Signature	75 73 74 61 72 at offset 257
SHA-256	8945e4748f5e52a966a8ddf379bd581b843f10b8a710054f91ea88a88590f390
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-5mb.tar 'https://sampletestfiles.com/downloads/tar/sample-tar-5mb.tar'
sha256sum sample-tar-5mb.tar     # Linux
shasum -a 256 sample-tar-5mb.tar # macOS

On Windows, run Get-FileHash sample-tar-5mb.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 5 MB?: Yes. It is 5,242,880 bytes, which is 5 MB in the binary units that operating systems and server limits use (1 KB = 1,024 bytes).
What is inside the 5 MB TAR file?: A ustar archive with a README and payload.bin, 5,240,320 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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