WinRAR Updated to Version 3.91, Adds tar.bz2 Support

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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If you still use WinRAR, you might be interested to hear that RARLAB just released the latest version, 3.91. New items include the ability to unpack 7-zip archives with the LZMA2 algorithm and opening tar.bz2 archives. Version notes are here.

“By providing regular updates, we are taking care of achieving the aspired by us high compatibility, up-to-datedness and stability of our software. With the latest version we have fixed several bugs and have fulfilled some of our customers’ wishes,” says Öncül Kaya, Managing Director of win.rar GmbH.
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the first 64-bit native one was 3.90, but it's been enabled in the context menu since 3.70 which was out in 2006 I believe.
 
As we all know... winrar is awesome on levels of awesome that have never been measured before :D
 
lol. i suppose winRAR is better than pkunzip; running from a command line. lol... been a while since I had done that...
 
Sweet, love WinRAR, I still use it. I'm surprised they're still updating it, though!
 
7-zip is now my favorite cross platform unzip tool, and I'll never need to see a WinZip or WinRAR nag screen again! Hooray for free and open source, with BETTER compression and more (up until now I guess) formats available! 7-zip should be an excellent example of what FOSS can do.

I feel bad for Mac users. Last time I heard, their most popular unzip tool costs 49.95.
 
tec805 said:
If? I thought this was a site for tech people. I'd understand if you said "if" about WinZip, and 7-Zip never caught on, but WinRAR has been the format of choice for a while now. :cool:
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I know many "tech people" that use 7-zip instead of WinRAR for their archive/extraction tool of choice, myself included. Or are you talking about the .RAR format vs the .7z format?
 
Terry Olaes said:
I know many "tech people" that use 7-zip instead of WinRAR for their archive/extraction tool of choice, myself included. Or are you talking about the .RAR format vs the .7z format?
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Terry is correct. 7-zip is pretty much taken the lead away from all competitors due to multi platform, multi format(RAR, 7z, Zip) functions. You can't be free either.
 
I think he's talking about the RAR extension.RAR is proprietary though, you need WinRAR or RAR to create one. So if you want to create RAR files, WinRAR > 7zip IIRC. But I've been living in a fucking tombstone for the past 10 years so...
 
The only thing I'm not sure how to do in 7-zip is unpack the .r00, .r01, etc. RAR files. I always had to use WinRAR for those.
 
P4rD0nM3 said:
I think he's talking about the RAR extension.RAR is proprietary though, you need WinRAR or RAR to create one. So if you want to create RAR files, WinRAR > 7zip IIRC. But I've been living in a fucking tombstone for the past 10 years so...
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I think you are correct also. While 7-zip cannot compress in RAR format, it can unpack. BTW - I do believe 7z has better compression now than RAR files. I've seen a huge increase in 7z files too.
 
Master Blaster said:
I think you are correct also. While 7-zip cannot compress in RAR format, it can unpack. BTW - I do believe 7z has better compression now than RAR files. I've seen a huge increase in 7z files too.
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This.

On most things that aren't movies or music, I usually get better compression with 7zip using ultra compression method.

At times it been up to 30+% better compression with WinRAR!
 
7-Zip 9.07Beta, with the LZMA2 compression algorithm is the greatest. It's quick while getting a much better compression ratio compared to WinRAR.
 
Extracting a single 6.5GB file:

7zip (x64) - 2 minutes, 18 seconds
WinRAR (x64) - 1 minute, 46 seconds

I think I'll stick with WinRAR ;)
 
so different programs unzip faster than others? i didnt know that.
 
IME Winrar does better with corrupt archives than 7-zip - though it years since I've had a need to extract stuff from corrupt archives. Interestingly I bought Winrar back then and my license is still valid for this version. Nice.
 
7zip is vastly superior and has had x64 and tar.bz support for some time now.
 
450 said:
The only thing I'm not sure how to do in 7-zip is unpack the .r00, .r01, etc. RAR files. I always had to use WinRAR for those.
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you can just right click the first rar file of that split archive (rar, r00, r01 etc or 001, 002 etc) and select "extract here" or "extract <location>". or you assign that extension to 7-zip so you can double click to open and extract from the GUI.

Master Blaster said:
I think you are correct also. While 7-zip cannot compress in RAR format, it can unpack. BTW - I do believe 7z has better compression now than RAR files. I've seen a huge increase in 7z files too.
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i have about 600 GB of roms from the stone age of console/arcade gaming to the dreamcast era which i converted from rar to 7z and on average the whole thing got smaller by 17% compared to the size in rar using best compression in both cases (only sega saturn games compressed significantly better with rar in most cases for whatever reason). that is pretty significant considering that rar is already quite good. yea, disk space is cheap now, but every time i add another HD i need another for backup and i'd rather make use of the space in the best way not to mention the power consumption of more drives.

--

oh what horrible times back then when there was only winzip, ace for dos and rar was so much better. i use 7-zip now too because of better compression and it's free. 7-zip is one of those tools that make me appreciate open source so much. unfortunately a lot of people don't even know it and think rar is still on top. well, yes, i know there are algorithms with better compression, but PAQ8 sure is slow as hell lol
 
RogueTrip said:
This.

On most things that aren't movies or music, I usually get better compression with 7zip using ultra compression method.

At times it been up to 30+% better compression with WinRAR!
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Depends on what it is. If you have a lot of .WAV or bitmaps chances are RAR will be smaller than 7zip. and RAR can have built in PAR support, as well as support partial extraction of corrupted/incomplete files (handy for determining what something is before downloading it all) and as mentioned faster to compress and decompress.There's a reason why it still is popular with a lot of people.

7zip does has it's place, especially for things that are redundant like game roms, text files and some archives, but at least for me for everyday use, I'll stick with RAR and use 7zip when appropriate.
 
I also use WinRAR because I like their CLI feature where you can create compressed files with date and/or time attached to the file name. A huge plus when you like to use your server's built in maintenance features such as task schedule and SQL's automatic backup unattended daily to an external drive or a remote site.

winrar a -agDD-MMM-YYYY -r c:\backup.rar "C:\Data\Backupfiles"

would result in the file name backup-19-dec-2009.rar
 
Azhar said:
I also use WinRAR because I like their CLI feature where you can create compressed files with date and/or time attached to the file name. A huge plus when you like to use your server's built in maintenance features such as task schedule and SQL's automatic backup unattended daily to an external drive or a remote site.

winrar a -agDD-MMM-YYYY -r c:\backup.rar "C:\Data\Backupfiles"

would result in the file name backup-19-dec-2009.rar
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I find using the ISO standard date format, especially in file names/tables, makes for nicer sorting. YYYY-MM-DD.
 
I've had my WinRAR keyfile for what has to be going on a decade now, and love the program. I don't get the constant need for people to chime in with smart-ass comments on how this-or-that program is better. The thread's about WinRAR, not 7zip.
 
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