WinRAR

WinRAR is a file archiving application that works with several different files in addition to its own proprietary RAR format. It's designed to offer better compression ratios than traditional archiving tools without sacrificing any of the speed that users have become accustomed to. Since it includes its own file browser as well as a drop-down menu interface, WinRAR can also be used to poke through archives downloaded from the web without needing to extract them first.

While the RAR format has received steady updates over the years, the latest fifth revision offers far more features than most users will ever need. As long as you're running the program from a dedicated 64-bit system, it offers 11 different compression dictionary sizes ranging from a single binary megabyte all the way up to a full gigabyte. Those who are working on 32-bit computers can go as high as 256MB before they start to run into trouble.

Default dictionary sizes hover around 32MB, which translates into dramatically improved compression ratios when deflating archives made up of files that tend to compress well. For instance, text files, MIDI music and traditional Windows bitmap pictures will drop down to a much smaller file size than, say, MP4 movies ever would. Instead of trying to make it possible to reduce the size of files that are already compressed, the RAR format has emphasized greater ratios for those that aren't.

Path lengths have gotten a big increase as well. When you create a new archive with WinRAR, it allows you to have file and folder paths that are up to 2,048 characters in length. The app can create traditional ZIP files as well as RAR compressed folders, and these path length limits apply to these as well. That means you can create compliant ZIP folders that have file names much longer than those created by most other apps.

In spite of the fact that the deflation algorithm used by ZIP archives is nowhere near as efficient as the partial matching prediction system found in RAR archives, anybody who creates conventional compressed folders with WinRAR should find that they're seeing better ratios than they otherwise would. Some extreme use cases could allow for the creation of ZIP folders that are around a fifth smaller than they otherwise would be.

Power users will likely want to replace the original compressed folder wizard that comes with Windows once they get used to these impressive ratios. Fortunately, it's possible to make WinRAR the default application for opening both RAR and ZIP files. Fans of the software are also free to name it as a helper application inside of their browsers, so they can open up archives downloaded from the Internet on the fly.

By default, WinRAR writes a checksum to each archive it creates that spells out the health of individual files stored inside of it. These are typically done with the 32-bit cyclic redundancy check system that's backwards compatible with pretty much everything in the compression market. That means you can check ZIP files created with WinRAR using other pieces of software and get accurate safety checks in just a few moments. Those who don't mind only working with other computers that have a copy of WinRAR installed can take advantage of an option that bumps these checksums up to the much safer 256-bit Blake-2 file-hashing routine.

System administrators usually only use file checksums to ensure that everything was stored correctly when files are transferred by disk drive or over a network. Though it can be hard to predict any future changes in the security industry, that 256-bit hash is usually seen as unique enough to know whether or not a particular archive got tampered with by a so-called monster-in-the-middle attack.

Perhaps the most impressive new feature is support for both hard and symbolic links. While these are usually associated with the Unix architecture used by GNU/Linux and macOS machines, Microsoft's New Technology File System does provide them as an option. Users who want to back entire NTFS data structures up to a single archive can activate this support. Once they decide to extract the archive, WinRAR will recreate these links as long as it's extracting it on another NTFS drive. If it has to extract them on something with the FAT16 or FAT32 file systems, then WinRAR will simply ignore the links and create extra blank files in their place to avoid throwing out an error message.Dedicated users of the special features offered by NTFS can also write Quick Open records to RAR5 folders so they can get opened faster than traditional archives would.

Quick Open support should work fairly well even when someone is extracting an archive to a drive that doesn't offer all of the bonus features provided by NTFS. That means someone who shares RAR5 files on a thumb stick formatted with the exFAT file system can still take advantage of this technology. Perhaps even more importantly, the software writes out additional records that makes them backwards compatible with older versions of the software. That's of particular importance to anyone who plans on posting RAR files online.

Considering the fact that these can easily get uploaded to nearly any cloud storage service, RAR5 is quickly becoming one of the most used archive formats on the web. Specialists will sometimes use it when sharing large media collections because it's harder for web services to search through RAR5 archives than it is for them to look through a ZIP file. Versions exist for Macintosh computers as well as GNU/Linux machines, which helps to ensure interoperability with this Windows app. Precompiled binaries for Windows CE, FreeBSD and even the MS-DOS command line exist so you'll normally not have to worry that someone wouldn't be able to open your archive if they grab it off the net.

Due to the fact that people often share RAR folders online, there's a good chance that many WinRAR users are media collectors who are interested in finding content online. As soon as they do, they can unpack their archives into a separate folder for later inspection. This feature helps to reduce the risk that they'll spread errant files all over the place by mistake. Inexperienced users will sometimes create archives that don't include a top-level directory, which would create quite a mess if WinRAR wasn't smart enough to stop it from happening.

Usually, it's not good when a developer decides to remove a feature entirely but those who relied extensively on RAR archives have actually been pleased to note that the file comments field is gone. While you can still work with archives that had comments placed in them, WinRAR no longer allows you to create new ones with that feature. As a result, the data structures it writes are much simpler and not bogged down by something that few people ever really used.

Encryption has gotten beefed up quite a bit. The older AES system deployed by WinRAR was stuck on 128-bits. Newer versions of the archive specification allow users to encrypt their archives with a 256-bit algorithm that's more or less impossible to crack. In theory, any encryption system is going to have flaws unless it's based on a one-time pad. While WinRAR hasn't gone that far, the amount of computing power needed to break into a RAR5 compressed folder without having the password is beyond what most crackers would ever have access to.

While most people are going to use WinRAR to work with its own properiatary format as well as traditional ZIP files, it can actually work with a wide variety of other formats as well. It can extract and even verify the checksums of cabinet files, gzip archives made on GNU/Linux machines, bzip2 folders, 7z objects and even xz files. On top of this, it can unpack LHA and ZST files. Java Archives are essentially structured ZIP files, so WinRAR should prove compatible with these as well.

One of the more interesting features is the ability to unpack ISO files as though they were any other archive. You don't even have to mount them since WinRAR can unpack an ISO straight into a directory. Unfortunately, you won't be able to create any new ISO files with WinRAR, but it's not really designed as a file format utility.

Unpacking tape archives with WinRAR is as easy as clicking on a couple of menu items. Like ISOs, you won't be able to create TAR files with the app but it's easy enough to pack them into a format that's a little more friendly to Windows-based PCs so this shouldn't be too much of a problem for most users. Files packed with uuencoding information don't cause problems for WinRAR either, which is quite impressive considering the rarity of that format in the Windows world. Those who have split archives stored as uuencoded data don't have to worry either, since WinRAR can extract these too.

Perhaps the most unusual format that the utility can work with is the simply named Z archive, which is handled by the old Unix compress utility. This file format came out all the way back in 1985, and it has been phased out of a large number of Unix workflows so it's really interesting to find a Windows-based utility that's capable of unpacking it. For reference, the first version of the more popular ZIP archive supported by WinRAR was released nearly four years later. Considering the simplicity of the Z format, unpacking one of these archives usually only takes a few moments at most.

Support for multithreaded CPU functionality can make this process even faster no matter what format you're trying to unpack. This feature allows the utility to take full advantage of any special features that your computer's microchip might offer. Some Intel chips offer special hardware acceleration options that make packing and unpacking archives go much smoother, and WinRAR can take advantage of these.

Software developers can create their own self-extracting archives, which are essentially very small installation programs. Self-extracting archives are technically programs and contain binary opcode just like any other Windows program would. They'll unpack their files in whatever area they're told to, so those who are distributing their own apps will want to give this a try. It's also a good idea for someone who wants to give a RAR archive to a friend of theirs who might not have the software installed. Since they're still just files, it's normally possible to transfer them using any storage media or online service without issue.

Time stamp preservation tools give system administrators the freedom to save important metadata when using WinRAR to backup large directory trees. They can also run a deduplication subroutine that will get rid of identical copies of files before adding the originals to an archive. While duplicate files usually only add a small additional footprint to an archive since the data is already compressed, this can help to keep things even more lean. Files as large as 16EB can get added to a new archive with WinRAR, though you'd certainly need an awful lot of data tapes to unpack something of that size. It's likely that the developers of this utility were trying to set massive theoretical limits in order to avoid any problems that might happen in the future as a result of major hardware breakthroughs.

Chances are that many users will be comfortable with the app's basic options and may not even explore these advanced features. Those who do, however, will find that WinRAR is a rich application that provides much more than simple archiving tools.