Would anyone be willing to give me some pointers?

Windows OS. I want to compress files and folders into archive.
I will transfer them using SecureFTP to a Linux machine.
On Linux machine I would like to decompress files and folders into original
structure.

Can anyone help me on the program to use for compression on Windows? I use
Winzip and WinRAR right now.
Maybe I can use Winzip or WinRAR to compress them in .tar.gz format but I
haven't figured it out.
Thanks,
Paul