tar files and "clean" command

[tagal4]

Is there a way to tell whether a tar file that I made to back up my system is complete once it gets moved onto a memory stick? I did this as part of reinstalling my operating system to try to solve some configuration issues and when I moved to tar file to the memory stick the transfer quit about a third of the way thru (according to the progress bar) it said there was a problem, so I clicked on the "skip" button and the progress bar window disappeared and low and behold the file icon was in the memory disk window. I just need to know for sure that that means the whole thing got moved over so I don't lose data when I reinstall my operating system and try to restore the backup.

I'm still learning about using the terminal and was wondering if the "clean" command is safe to use to empty the cache folder (to save space). I didn't use this when I made the above tar file and my guess is I probably made the tar file bigger than it needed to be which might have added to the time and difficulty moving it to the memory stick.

Thanks for any input in these matters. Little by little I'm learning!

[tagal4]

I looked at the properties of the tar file in the USB memory stick folder and it says only 4.3 GB of the 14.9 GB file got transferred over even though there is over 40 GB of space free in the memory stick. I tried to delete the tar file in the / folder (so I can try to make a smaller one) but I can't do that because I don't have permission - can I do that with a sudo command in the terminal?

Sorry for my ignorance about this, but like I said above I'm learning about good ways to back up my system when doing a clean install.

[L_V]

You should show your commands to see what you call "the system".
+ where did you find the command "clean" ?

[Turtletronic]

As soon as I read errors with USB sticks / ThumbDrives in connection with sizes of around 4GB ... is your device properly formatted? FAT32 is limited to a filesize of 4GB (e.g. multiple files, but each with a max of 4GB).

[tagal4]

I'm not sure about the formatting. I'll have to look into this. Thanks.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Use f2fs for USB sticks.