Compress your files into single or multi-volume archives, create self-extracting archives and protect your archived data by encrypting and password protecting it. Decompress RAR, ZIP, ARJ and other types of archive formats.
WinRAR is an archive manager which lets you create, organize and manage your
archived files. With the help of this software, you can create archive files of your data, compress or decompress your files and protect your files from damages.
You can compress your files in RAR and ZIP formats only. But when it comes to decompression, the software can unpack CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ and TAR.GZ, BZ2 and TAR.BZ2, ACE, UUE, JAR (Java Archive), ISO (ISO9660 - CD image), 7Z, XZ, Z (Unix compress) file formats along with RAR and ZIP formats. It can save data up to 8,589 billion gigabytes in size.
For beginners, the WinRAR features wizards for better understanding through basic questions. With a user-friendly interface, you can customise the theme of the software just by downloading it from its website. The experienced users can use the command line interface to perform various tasks. You can extract, test, comment, protect, encrypt, lock, scan, convert, or benchmark your archive files.
With the help of the inbuilt viewer, you can view the contents of your archived files and can also create a compression profile for the same. With recovery options, you can even retract your damaged archives.
WinRAR is, without any doubt, the best file compression software. It offers many advanced features for both new and old users. I recommend this software to anyone who is in need of a multi-purpose file compression utility.
v4.20.3 [May 3, 2012]
1. Changes in RAR compression:
a) RAR general compression algorithm is optimized for better
utilization of several processor cores. While some speed gain
is possible even in single processor mode, best results
are achieved in multi-core environment.
Speed gain depends on data type and average file size.
Several cores are utilized more efficiently when compressing
large files.
b) we had to increase memory requirements to achieve higher
compression speed. General RAR compression algorithm allocates
about 120 MB comparing to 40 MB in WinRAR 4.11;
c) RAR text compression algorithm cannot utilize several CPU cores
efficiently, so its performance in multiprocessor environment
is much lower than for general algorithm. Also its decompression
speed is much lower than in general algorithm regardless of
CPU number. So we decided to disable the text algorithm by default.
If you need maximum possible compression ratio for plain text data
regardless of speed, you can enable the text compression
in "Advanced compression parameter" dialog. Press "Compression..."
button on "Advanced" page of archiving dialog to access it.
You can also change this option permanently in default compression
profile;
In the command line mode the text compression can be enabled
with -mct switch;
d) "Fastest" (-m1) compression mode also supports several processor
cores now. In 4.11 it could use only a single processor core.
2. RAR general decompression algorithm speed is slightly improved,
though not to same extent as RAR compression. RAR decompression
is not able to use several processor cores, so its performance
does not depend on a number of cores.
3. Changes in ZIP compression:
a) now ZIP compression supports several processor cores resulting
in noticeably higher performance in multi-core environment.
Single CPU ZIP compression is also faster than in 4.11;
b) memory use for ZIP compression is increased to about 15 MB.
4. Recovery volume creating and processing can use several CPU cores
resulting in higher speed. Though, typically hard drive seek speed
is a limiting factor for recovery volumes, so this gain is most
noticeable when working with solid state drive.
5. Now the allowed value for -mt switch is 1 - 32,
not 0 - 16 as before.
6. "Find files" command can search data in 7-Zip archives.
Previously "Find files" did not support .7z archive format.
7. Windows 2000 is not supported by WinRAR and WinRAR self-extracting
modules anymore.
8. "Save current settings" button in "Advanced SFX options" dialog
is now available only when converting an existing archive to SFX.
Options saved with this button are applied only to convert to SFX
operation.
If you create or update SFX archive, only SFX options stored
in default compression profile are used. Options saved
in "Advanced SFX options" dialog are ignored for these operations.
