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.
v5.21.2 [Mar 3, 2012]
1. "Drag and drop context menu" options in "Settings/Integration/Context menu items" dialog allow to disable WinRAR archiving and extraction commands in context menu displayed after dragging and dropping files with right mouse button.
2. If winrar.ini file is present in the same folder as WinRAR installer, winrar.ini will be copied to WinRAR program folder after completing installation.
3. While previous versions could produce RAR5 volumes of slightly smaller than requested size sometimes, such situation is less likely now. In most cases volume size equals to specified by user.
4. Now by default WinRAR skips symbolic links with absolute paths in link target when extracting. You can enable creating such links with "Allow absolute paths in symbolic links" option on "Advanced" page of extraction dialog or with -ola command line switch.
Such links pointing to folders outside of extraction destination folder can present a security risk. Enable their extraction only if you are sure that archive contents is safe, such as your own backup.
5. Bugs fixed:
a) WinRAR 5.20 issued unnecessary user account control (UAC) prompt, when running an executable from archive stored in UAC protected folder. Since nothing is extracted to folder containing an archive in such case, UAC prompt is not needed;
b) WinRAR could overwrite files with read-only attribute only when unpacking RAR and ZIP archive formats. Now it is also implemented for other archive formats supported by WinRAR;
c) "Elapsed time" and "Time left" were displayed incorrectly when applying "Convert" command to multiple archives and enabling "Add recovery record" option.
