shrinking backup files

[Charles Malespin]

> > 
> >  tar czvf /path/to/file tar-archive.tar.gz 

Tried this: 
sudo tar cjvf /home/malespin/backup/home.tar tar-archive.tar.bz2

and got:
tar: tar-archive.tar.bz2: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

for both of them.  

> 
> You may also want to avoid sticking everything in one big tarball. It 
> takes a fair amount of processing time to compress / uncompress Gigs of 
> data and there's also the risk that if the backup is dodgy, all the data 
> is useless.

How do you split up the /etc and /home files to make smaller ones?  I am
willing to try anything, just need to get these files on a CD to have a
back up.