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.
v7.0 [Jun 21, 2012]
1. Compression dictionary sizes larger than 1 GB are supported for RAR archive format. Depending on the amount of physically available memory, dictionary up to 64 GB can be selected.
- Not power of 2 dictionary sizes can be specified for dictionaries exceeding 4 GB. So we are not limited to 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 series and can use values like 5 GB or 22 GB.
- Archives with dictionaries exceeding 4 GB can be unpacked only
by WinRAR 7.0 or newer. 64-bit WinRAR version is needed to unpack
archives with dictionaries exceeding 1 GB.
- Increasing the dictionary size can improve the compression ratio for large files with distant repeated blocks, like virtual machine disk images. It also can be efficient for sets of large similar files in a solid archive, such as a collection of software ISO images differing by version or localization.
2. WinRAR issues a prompt allowing to cancel or continue if dictionary size in extracted RAR archive exceeds "Maximum dictionary size allowed to extract" parameter in "Settings/Compression".
- It is done to prevent the unexpected excessive memory allocation.
- In the command line mode by default WinRAR refuses to unpack archives with dictionary exceeding 4 GB. Use -md or -mdx to allow unpacking dictionaries up to and including the specified size.
- Unlike -md, -mdx is applied to extraction only and can be added to RAR environment variable, not affecting archiving commands.
3. "Define dictionary sizes" dialog in "Settings/Compression" can be used to customize dictionary sizes proposed in the drop down list associated with "Dictionary size" field in "Archive name and parameters" dialog.
4. Alternate search algorithm, optimized to locate longer and more distant repeated data blocks, can be used when creating RAR archives.
- It helps to improve the compression ratio and sometimes speed for redundant data like big text files.
- It increases memory usage and might reduce the compression speed for some types of data. It can be turned on or off with "Long range search" options in "Advanced compression parameters" dialog or with -mcl[ |-] switch. If "Auto" option is selected, WinRAR applies the long range search depending on the compression method, dictionary size and other parameters.
- This algorithm is required for dictionaries exceeding 4 GB and turning it off is ignored for such dictionaries.
5. Much slower and more exhaustive repeated data search and compression algorithm can be enabled with "Exhaustive search" option in "Advanced compression parameters" dialog or with -mcx switch.
- It might provide the additional compression gain for some types of redundant data, but at much lower compression speed.
- Long range search is needed to implement this mode efficiently, so the exhaustive search option activates it automatically.
- Both long range and exhaustive search option do not affect the compatibility of created archives. So if dictionary size is in 128 KB - 4 GB range, archives created with these search options can be unpacked by all WinRAR versions beginning from 5.0.
6. Maximum path length limit is increased from 2047 to 65535 characters.
7. Creating archives in RAR 4.x format isn't supported anymore.
- Options and switches specific for this format are removed.
- It doesn't affect RAR 4.x archives decompression, which is included into WinRAR.
8. "Propagate Mark of the Web" option in "Settings/Security" dialog controls assigning the archive Mark of the Web to extracted files.
- It is possible to prohibit propagating, allow it for several predefined file groups, for all files or for files matching user defined file masks.
- Mark of the Web is the security zone information added by Internet browsers to downloaded files. It can be used by various software for security purposes.
- It is supported only by GUI WinRAR. Console RAR doesn't propagate Mark of the Web regardless of this option.
9. "Attributes" column can be enabled in "Settings/File list/Columns".
- It displays file attribute abbreviations, such as 'A' for "Archive" and 'D' for directory.
- If file attribute isn't among those recognized by WinRAR, the numeric value of file attributes is also displayed.
- This value uses hexadecimal format for Windows attributes or octal format for Unix attributes.
10. "Benchmark" command allows to specify the exact number of threads and copy results to clipboard. Information about WinRAR and Windows versions, CPU and memory is added to benchmark window.
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