what do you do with .rar files?

Question

what do you do with .rar files?

Answer 1

.rar is a file archive. It is very much like WinZip.



http://www.rarlab.com/rar_file.htm

Answer 2

1. What is a RAR file

RAR is the native format of WinRAR archiver. Like other archives, RAR files are data containers, they store one or several files in the compressed form. After you downloaded RAR file from Internet, you need to unpack its contents in order to use it.



2. How to handle RAR files

WinRAR provides the complete support for RAR files, so you may both create and unpack them. If you installed WinRAR on your computer and downloaded RAR file from Internet, you may double click on RAR file icon to open it in WinRAR, select all files, press "Extract To" button, enter a destination path and press "OK". Another way is to click on the RAR file in Explorer using the right mouse button. If you enabled "Shell integration" option when installing WinRAR, the file context menu will contain "Extract to ..." item.



Some RAR files can be parts of multi-volume sequences. In WinRAR you can split a huge archive to a few smaller files, which are called volumes. They may have extensions .rar (the first volume), .r00, .r01, ..., or .part1.rar (the first volume), .part2.rar, ..., etc. If you need to unpack volumes, place all them to the same folder and start extraction from the first volume.



3. RAR versus ZIP

Comparing to ZIP file format, RAR provides a number of advanced features: more convenient multipart (multivolume) archives, tight compression including special solid, multimedia and text modes, strong AES-128 encryption, recovery records helping to repair an archive even in case of physical data damage, Unicode support to process non-English file names and a lot more.

Answer 3

.rar files are archives(there files insede them). Download WinRar program and open the archive.

Be carefull, make sure you scan the files as there could be virus/spyware inside as well

Answer 4

These are compressed files, these free products will unlock them or make ones for your self.

File Decompressors /Compressors



WinRAR is a 32-bit Windows version of RAR Archiver, an archiver and archive manager. RAR files can usually compress content 8 percent to 15 percent more than ZIP files. WinRAR's main features include strong general and multimedia compression, the ability to process non-RAR archive formats, ZIP compression and decompression, long filename support, programmable self-extracting archives (SFX), damaged archive repair, authenticity verification, embedded file comments, and encryption. Unicode is supported in archive filenames, allowing non-English filenames to be handled painlessly.

You can manipulate the parameters of many archives at once and view a volume sequence as a single archive. WinRAR is able to convert other archive formats to RAR. It supports the Find command, allowing search for specified text and files in archives. The latest WinRAR version can rename files inside of RAR archives and preserves file time using the high precision NTFS time format.

http://www.rarlabs.com/download.htm



7 Zip

http://www.7-zip.org/



7-Zip is a file archiver with high compression ratio.

7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL.

The main features of 7-Zip:

High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression

7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL

Supported formats:

Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR

Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS

For ZIP and GZIP formats 7-Zip provides compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip

Self-extracting capability for 7z format

Integration with Windows Shell

Powerful File Manager

Powerful command line version

Plugin for FAR Manager

Localizations for 63 languages





http://www.paehl.de/english.php



Simplyzip is a FREEWARE multi archiver. It does not write any entries to the registry or anywhere else. Version 1.1 has been rewritten from scratch.

Main Features:

Open: ZIP, CZIP, ACE, CAB, RAR, TAR, GZIP, LZH, BZ2, SQX, RS, UUE, XXE, BASE64, UCL, ARJ, ZLIB, ALIB, RPM, DEB, 7-ZIP

Create: 7z, ZIP, CZIP, Cab, LHA, TAR, TAR GZ TAR BZ2, ACE (optionale DLL), Deepfreezer, SQX, UCL, RS, ZIP-SFX/LHA-SFX, RAR-SFX, UUE/XXE, ZLIB and Base64.

Multi-ZIP

Backup to disk (e.g. CD)

ZIP-Rpair

Crypt files with:Rijndael AES/Twofish (both 256bit keysize) and Blowfish (448bit keysize) incl SFX creator and an ArcConverter

Optional: See ArcConvert below

Create RAR/ACE (new version) and LHA SFX (with optional files from my site)

Localisation: English, German, Italian, Spanish, portugues-br, Swedish and Thai

ZIPSFX now in English, German, French and Spanish (in the setup)

Standalone: After installation you can copy all files from Simplyzip folder (excepted the uninst.exe) and use it whereever you want

Optional Plugins (ArcConvert, ACE DLL, LFB Archiver, Unpacker and a short german manual)

Answer 5

You un-zip them like any other compressed file

Answer 6

You unzip them with winrar.

Answer 7

Use WinRAR to unzip them.

Answer 8

http://www.rarlab.com/rar_file.htm