RARLab - (Shareware)
The very popular WinRAR compress any file or folder offering the possibility to protect or to recover them in case of necessity.
WinRAR is a reference in the field of archiving data compression utilities. Based on RAR compression algorithm, it can significantly reduce the size of the documents.
WinRAR is very useful when it comes to open its archives in case the user does not have this software because it can create self-extracting archives.
WinRAR integrates with Windows Explorer and allows to compress and decompress files from the context menu. For mainstream users, this feature may be sufficient, but WinRAR also includes more advanced features such as protection of archives by creating recovery volumes possibilities, adding passwords, test archived files or a module for benchmarking test performance by compressing the computer. The encryption uses the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard ) method with a key of 128 bits.
The application is also able to repair a damaged archive when a network transfer was not completed correctly or the storage medium is faulty. But the program is not limited to RAR and ZIP formats because it allows you to view and extract the contents of archives using less common formats such as ACE , 7 -ZIP , CAB , TAR , ISO, GZIP and BZ2 by instance.
1. WinRAR version for Windows x64 is available. If you use
Windows x64, it is strongly recommended to install 64 bit
WinRAR version. It provides a higher performance and better
shell integration than 32 bit version.
2. RAR compression speed is improved for multi-core
and multi-CPU systems. This improvement is most noticeable
in Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems.
3. "Remove duplicate folders from extraction path" option
in "Settings/Compression" dialog is replaced by more universal
"Remove redundant folders from extraction path" option.
This option will eliminate redundant archive name based folders
from extraction path if you unpack an archive with
"Extract to DestName\" context menu command and if archive
root folder contains only one folder and no files.
4. Changes in "Extraction path and options" dialog:
a) "New folder" button creates a new subfolder in currently
selected folder;
b) F2 key renames a selected folder in the folders tree;
c) F5 key updated the tree pane contents;
d) Del key removes a selected folder in the folders tree.
5. You can enable "Show seconds" option in "Settings/File list"
dialog if you wish to see seconds in file dates in file list
in WinRAR shell.
6. "Where to check for SFX archives" options group
in "Settings/Integration/Context menus items" dialog lets
you to control processing of SFX archives in context menus.
For example, if you frequently right click ".exe" files
on slow network disks, you can turn off "Network disks" options
to minimize the delay before displaying the context menu.
7. If you sort files by name in the file list in WinRAR shell,
WinRAR will use the new logical file name sorting,
same as in Windows Explorer, considering digits in file names
by their numerical value. So files will be sorted as
1.txt, 2.txt, 10.txt instead of previous 1.txt, 10.txt, 2.txt.
This new sort behavior is available in Windows XP Service Pack 2
and newer.
8. Ctrl+W key combination can be used to close the main WinRAR window
also as WinRAR viewer windows. "View as Windows text" shortcut
in WinRAR viewer changed from Ctrl+W to Ctrl+I.
9. New command line switch -r- disables recursion completely.
So 'rar a -r- arc dirname' command will add only the empty
dirname folder and ignore its contents. By default, if dirname
does not include wildcards, RAR adds its contents even if
-r switch is not specified.
10. If used when extracting, the new command line switch -ai forces
RAR to ignore file attributes. When using this switch,
extracted files will always have attributes assigned by
operating system to a newly created file by default.
11. If output file name is not specified in "cw" command, console RAR
will send comment data to stdout.
12. When compressing stdin data with -si[name] switch, RAR sets
modification time of archived entry to current system time.
Previous RAR versions did not fill this field, resulting in
meaningless modification time for stdin.
13. Message displayed when you place the mouse cursor on WinRAR
tray icon includes the archive name now. Previously only
time left and total percent were displayed for archiving operations.
14. Bugs fixed:
a) WinRAR could fail to open tar or tar.gz archive if such archive
contained a file larger than 8 GB;
b) WinRAR context menu did not work properly in Windows 7 beta
if icons in context menus were enabled and user clicked
a file inside of Windows 7 Library folder;
c) previous WinRAR versions failed to rename files having 5 or more
continuous spaces in the name. WinRAR shell does not display
such spaces for safety reasons, because they can hide an actual
file extension. But this security measure prevented the rename
command to work properly.