ok sorry about that, didn't know tarball as a tar command line, but it looks like you have space problems, i suggest you tar a few files, backup and erase the file and tar the nex according to the space that it's on hdd, another though possible it's that there are damadeg sectors on the hdd, when the tar file it's on creation goes to the bad sectors and it breaks, maybe should backup small pieces good luck, it could be better to get a tape to backup or over the net pass small files with created with tar, hope to guide or help you