GoodSync is an easy and reliable file backup and file synchronization software. It automatically analyzes, synchronizes, and backs up your emails, precious family photos, contacts, MP3s, financial documents, and other important files locally - between desktops, laptops, servers, external drives, and Windows Mobile devices, as well as remotely through FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and more. Like you now know, a RAR file is similar to a folder that contains other files. If your RAR file contains MP3 files, for example, you must open the RAR file, not convert it, to get the MP3s. Read the section above on opening RAR files to learn how to actually unpack the MP3s (or PDFs, or whatever is in the RAR file that you want access to). RAR Reader is a small RAR file viewer and a free and easy to use compression software. An extraction utility for archives compressed in.rar format. It's interface is very simple, making it easy.

In these days, you may not find a computer user who is unfamiliar with RAR files. RAR format has gained much popularity over these years as compared to its competitor archive formats like 7Z, zip, etc.Its reason is simple – a better data compression rate than ZIP. Moreover, RAR uses lossless compression.

Now, there’s a new RAR format – RAR5. It’s said to have better and fast compression-decompression as compared to the original format. And, it uses an enhanced encryption algorithm also.

What could be the benefits of using RAR5 over RAR4?

RAR4 was the default RAR format before RAR5. By the introduction of RAR5, the default compression directory size has increased to 1GB in 64 bit systems. For huge files, it’d offer greater compression.

And, be aware that the default size of the RAR compression dictionary was 32MB before RAR5. Now, you can spot the actual difference between these numbers.

New recovery log is another specialty of RAR5. With a log size equal to or greater than 5% of the file, RAR5 is much more damage resistant than RAR4. It’ll be valid even the file become corrupted.

And, it’s known to have better damaged archive recovery as compared with previous RAR formats. It uses a more advanced file table for quick browsing of archive and it has multicore decompression support too.

One more important thing is the encryption algorithm RAR5 uses. Unlike its previous version, RAR5 uses a solid 256-bit AES algorithm.

In many tests, RAR5 outrun 7-zip in terms of its speed and compression ratio although 7-zip is compared to be one of the fastest compression techniques available now.

What if I can’t able to unzip RAR5?

If you want to open files compressed with RAR5 algorithm, then you need WinRAR5. All other attempts to open RAR5 compressed files with popular decompressors have failed.

This incompatibility issue will be the only one possible limitation of RAR5 format till now.

Compression Speed and Efficiency

Different programs utilize different compression algorithms and have different compression settings to choose from. Some programs or settings prioritize speed—how quickly compression can be completed—while others sacrifice speed to focus on achieving a smaller file size.

Compression efficiency is also affected by file types. Text files can be compressed considerably, for example, but multimedia files, like MP3s or AVIs, may already be in a compressed state, meaning further compression may decrease folder or file size only slightly.

Utilizing different and more efficient algorithms sometimes calls for a change in file extension. For example, the program 7-Zip can use LZMA and LZMA2 compression algorithms, which result in a '.7z' file extension. These algorithms are much better at compressing files than the default ZIP method, which is fast but uses older and less efficient DEFLATE compression. However, the file extensions required for newer compression methods, which are not supported in any operating system by default, mean you may sacrifice accessibility when using them to share files. Likewise, RAR is better at compression than ZIP, but it, too, requires other software prior to use, even for simple data extraction/decompression.

In deciding which compression method to use, you should figure out which features you need most: speed, efficiency, accessibility, security, etc.

Compression Example

Igor Pavlov, the Russian developer of 7-Zip, has stated that the standard ZIP format is inferior to RAR and ZIP files created in 7-Zip. Though a lot does come down to the file types being compressed, RAR and 7-Zip's ZIP archives compress data as much as 30 to 40% better than standard ZIP.

Pavlov proved this by compressing an installation of Google Earth 3.0.0616. Before compression, Google Earth was 23.5 MB in size. Standard ZIP compressed this by 62%, while RAR achieved 71% compression and 7-Zip reached 76% compression.

Security

A program is required to secure ZIP and RAR files with a password. RAR files require WinRAR for compression in the first place, and WinRAR has password encryption settings you can use. Meanwhile, ZIP's default support in operating systems does not come with password protection settings in recent years; programs like 7-Zip or WinZip are required.

How secure the password protection on a ZIP or RAR file is depends partly on the program used to protect it. WinRAR uses an AES-128-bit encryption, but 7-Zip uses the more secure AES-256. This means that a password-protected ZIP file created in 7-Zip would take longer to crack than a RAR file created in WinRAR.

A lot of security comes down to password quality, though, too. Simple, one-word passwords that might be found in an English dictionary are very insecure and prone to brute-force attacks, regardless of your ZIP or RAR's encryption algorithms.

A ZIP or RAR with AES-128 encryption or better that has a good password would probably take years for supercomputers to crack. At present, there is no known attack that works well in such a scenario.

Programs

As the most popular archive file format, ZIP is not only built into most operating systems, but also recognized or improved upon by many other programs, like 7-Zip or IZArc, which are both freeware, and WinZip, which is shareware.

The following video explains how to create a ZIP file using both Windows' built-in support and the program 7-Zip:

Eugene Roshal, a Russian software engineer, is the developer of the RAR archive format and the owner of the WinRAR software. He has licensed the use of RAR decompression to many other programs outside of his WinRAR program (e.g., 7-Zip and WinZip) with the agreement that his work not be reverse engineered, but only WinRAR can compress data into a RAR file. As shareware, WinRAR has a free 40-day trial and costs $29.00 thereafter.

This next video talks about WinRAR and how to use it to compress and extract data:

Freeware and Shareware

Rar To Mp3 Mac

The following is a list of popular compression programs that recognize ZIP and RAR in some capacity.

Convert Rar To Mp3 Mac

• 7-Zip (Open Source Freeware for Windows)
• IZArc (Ad-Supported Freeware for Windows)
• PeaZip (Open Source Freeware for Windows and Linux)
• The Unarchiver (Freeware for Mac OS X)
• WinRAR (Shareware for Windows)
• WinZip (Shareware for Windows and Mac OS X)

Convert Rar To Mp3 Mac Online

References