tar to tape

The normal way is to put the entire folder path on the tar command line.

tar xvt /usr/home

This restores the files in folder /usr/home from the tape.

BUT! When the tar cv command was used to make the tar archive it would have to have beendone to put the /usr/home on the tape.
You may have usr/home.

So in that case you use

tar xv usr/home

Do a tar tv on the tape you want to restore from. That will show you on the tape how it folder was stored.

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