To make a folder, say foo/ to foo.tar.gz do
tar -czf foo.tar.gz foo/
And to extract it do
tar -xzf foo.tar.gz
For faster operations and to see progress do this. To make .tar.gz
tar cf - folder_name/ | pv | pigz > folder_name.tar.gz
To extract do
pigz -dc folder_name.tar.gz | pv | tar xf -
If pv is not installed, just remove this option from above.
pigz should be in the system. If not then do sudo pacman -Sy pigz