you can't tar files > 2 GB in size and tar has a size limit of 2 GB
1. free up /tmp if its full. verify with df
2. change file limit to unlimted and relogin
3. An error occurred during reading/writing.
4. The maximum filesize for the output file in the target filesystem -
in case the target for tar is a file - has been reached. The maximum
fs for standard JFS is 2GB
Some hints
In case of reading:
do a
$ tar -tvf MyDevice
to verify that you can read all data
In case of writing try to write to /dev/null to verfiy that the
problem is related to the target device
$ tar -cvf - /myDir >/dev/null
Alternatively, just do a zip followed by compress
your output will be filename.zip.Z
uncompress and unzip .... try if it works...?