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.
- Information about the critical vulnerability in WinRAR self-extracting archives published in news in September and October 2015 is incorrect. Unfortunately mass media failed to recognize that what was described as WinRAR vulnerability is Windows OLE vulnerability patched in November 2014: Even if unpatched, this Windows OLE vulnerability does not introduce new risk factors for WinRAR SFX archives. No patches for WinRAR are needed.
- Added extraction of multipart ZIP archives created by 7-Zip.
- Added extraction of files split to multiple parts with .001, .002, ..., extensions. You can open .001 file as a usual archive and then unpack its contents. WinRAR will combine all parts and save them to extracted file. All parts must be stored in the same folder before starting extraction. "001" item is included to "Associate WinRAR with" list in "Settings/Integration" dialog.
- WinRAR file list allows to use mouse Back and Forward buttons or Alt+Left and Alt+Right keyboard shortcuts to navigate in recently visited folders.
- Folder wildcards are allowed in RAR command line in file names to archive. For example: rar a backup c:\backup\2015*\* will archive all '2015*' folders in c:\backup. Use -r switch to search for '2015*' also in c:\backup subfolders.
- "Extract" button in SFX archive is changed to "Pause" when extraction is started, so it is possible to pause SFX extraction and resume it later.
- "Skip encrypted" option in "Find files" dialog to silently skip encrypted archives while performing search command.
- Archive test command works for tar.gz, tar.bz2 and tar.xz archives. Since TAR format does not provide file data checksums, WinRAR checks only validity of GZIP, BZIP2 or XZ container.
- Adding a new string to WinRAR diagnostic messages window could be slow and affect the operation performance in case of thousands of errors. Now it works fast regardless of errors number.
- New 'R' object for -sc switch defines encoding of console RAR messages sent to redirected files and pipes. For example: rar lb -scur data > list.txt will produce Unicode list.txt with archived file names.
- Sleep time parameter in -ri<priority>[:<sleep_time>] switch is adjusted to lower its impact to RAR performance and especially to recovery record related operations. Higher sleep time values are needed to reduce the system load to same level as in previous versions.
- Console RAR "l" and "v" commands display file time in YYYY-MM-DD format.
- When extracting RAR and ZIP archives created in Unix, WinRAR maps decomposed Unicode characters to precomposed. Such conversion is required for some Unix and OS X archives to correctly unpack non-English archived names in Windows. It works for Windows versions starting from Windows Vista.
- Modification time is set for all folders created when unpacking.7z archives. Previous versions set it only for non-empty folders.
- WinRAR prevents a computer to go to sleep by inactivity timeout until current operation, such as archiving, extraction or another archive processing, is done.
- Total progress bar is displayed when extracting .arj, .lzh and .cab archives (except multivolume archives).
- Progress bar is displayed when deleting files after archiving and when clearing "Archive" attribute of archived files.
- "Test" command also verifies contents of NTFS alternate data streams in RAR 3.x - 5.x archives. Previously their contents was checked only during extraction command.
# Bugs fixed:
- console RAR crashed instead of displaying an overwrite prompt when attempting to add files to already existing volumes;
- console RAR "lt" command did not display seconds in file timestamp;
- WinRAR failed to decompress .xxe files if they did not include "section N of xxencode" string in the body;
- WinRAR could not restore contents of NTFS alternate data stream saved with -os switch if it was split between different volumes.