WinRAR Releases and Discussion

winrar is used for archiving and recovery record purpose not maximum compression ratio .

 

so is 7z

 

so use that i always have 7zip but its never comfy like winrar
i introduce you to http://www.kuaizip.com/en/
for max compression specially on image &text content
i tested it years ago and some case better than 7zip!

 

Hmm I'll give it a test

 

I'm not trying to claim you're wrong without evidence but this is kinda the same situation where we are right now. I have no idea what files we are working with so I reserve judgement until I have some evidence either way. I have experienced no similar issues but I have not experience everything either.

 

Let's ask @Floyd 57 to share his test pdf file, I guess he made multiple copies of it to get 1 GB folder. I want to test them too.

 

Cmon i literally showed u the files in the video! I took 2 pdf files with total size about 7mb and then copied em till it made about 1 gig. Because i don't have many pdf files lying around unlike videos and images i cannot really fill a big folder with pdf files. So yeah now u know.

The main problem is they only performed one test. It's like testing AV on 1 sample. Different alghorithms and programs compress and decompress differently depending on many factors, a big one is the type of the file or the content. So if u only do 1 test how can that be conclusive? Not to mention they mention nothing on the folder that was used so u don't know anything at all what is included. And i mean i just showed an example where winrar can archive to 285 mb on the old test and like 222 on the in the video while 7zip can archive to 0.6mb on the old test and 1.Xmb on the video. And that's just 1 test mind u, i plan to do at least 10. And that just goes to show why only 1 test that u don't even know what is inside is a completely failed testing.

 

I am not sure if it's because of MY pdf files, or it's simply copying pdf files over and over, or simply winrar being vastly inferior, but u can prob achieve the same thing or something similar yourself if you try. Only one way to know! If you can't then we can look into it further

 

count me in too.
come on, 57, bring it on.

 

Sorry, I did not watch the video. Not something I can spend much time on at work. I'll try to check it out later.

 

I think I know why you are getting such a big discrepancy between the .rar and .lzma archives. You took 2 pdfs and copied them over and over to make a 1 GB folder.

WinRaR using RAR5 algorithm, is compressing each file, ignoring the fact that they are just two files copied over and over again, and resulting in a archive of 285 MB.

7-Zip using LZMA algorithm, has identified that there are only two unique files in the folder, and the rest is just the same two files copied over and over, so it has only compressed the 2 pdfs and most likely encoded the information in the archive that there are this number of each file in the archive. Thus giving you an archive size of just 0.6 MB.

Please trust me that if there had been a compression algorithm that could compress 1 GB data to 0.6 MB, it would have been a ground breaking momentous feat!

In order to get an accurate picture of each utility's archiving ability, I would recommend that you test them on a folder that contains unique files.

 

NSIS uses LZMA and archive only one of identical files, the rest are stored as an information where to place on installation.

 

WinRAR 6.10 adds Windows 11 Context Menus support
October 9, 2021
https://techdows.com/2021/10/winrar-windows-11-context-menu.html

 

Yes, this file based awareness is unique to LZMA algorithm. Most other compression algorithms rightly assume that a situation where someone would try to compress duplicate files would be unrealistic, as one could just delete the duplicate files, and recover more space than by trying to compress all the duplicate files.

WinRaR does have an option to create a "solid archive" during the archiving process. The resultant solid archive would be smaller in size than the standard archive. However, their help files says it has various disadvantages and recommend it only if the compression ratio is far more important than speed.

 

"solid" is somehow more vulnerable for defects. recovery information/archive is mandatory.

 

WinRAR 6.10 beta 2 Released (November 15, 2021)
Download
Changelog

Spoiler: Changes 6.10 beta 2

Version 6.10 beta 2

1. WinRAR icon is displayed on Windows 11 taskbar after invoking
WinRAR from Explorer context menu. There was no icon in previous
beta version in this case.

2. Archive information dialog includes the proper compression
dictionary size for ZIP Deflate64 and Implode compression methods.
Previously it was always 32 KB for them.

3. Bugs fixed:

a) WinRAR shell extension could crash in Windows 11;

b) restoring from tray did not correctly place WinRAR under other
opened windows in Windows 7;

c) "Cascaded context menus" option in "Settings" dialog was always
displayed as turned on, even if user turned it off earlier.

 

Hello,

A new beta release of WinRAR version 6.10 beta 3 was posted today.
Website - Downloads - Changelog

 

WinRAR 6.10 Released (January 24, 2022)
Website
Download
Changelog

Spoiler: Changes v6.10

Version 6.10

1. WinRAR can unpack contents of .zst and .zipx archives utilizing
Zstandard algorithm.

2. Added support of Windows 11 Explorer context menus.

Beginning from Windows 11, an application can add only a single top
level command or submenu to Explorer context menu.

If "Cascaded context menus" in "Integration settings" dialog is on,
this single item is a submenu storing all necessary WinRAR commands.

If this option is off, only one extraction command for archives
and one archiving command for usual files are available.
You can select these commands with "Context menu items..." button
in "Integration settings" dialog.

3. "Legacy context menus" option in "Settings/Integration" dialog
can be used in Windows 11 if WinRAR commands are missing in
"Show more options" Windows legacy context menu or in context menus
of third party file managers. If WinRAR commands are already present
here, keep "Legacy context menus" option turned off to prevent
duplicating them.

This option is not available in Windows 10 and older.

4. Windows XP is not supported anymore. Minimum required operating
system version is Windows Vista.

5. "Close" item is added to "When done" list on "Advanced" page of
archiving dialog. It closes WinRAR window, when archiving is done.

6. "When done" list is added to "Options" page of extraction dialog.
It allows to select an action like turning a computer off
or closing WinRAR after completing extraction.

7. Switch -si can be used when extracting or testing to read archive
data from stdin, such as:

type docs.rar | rar x -si -o+ -pmypwd dummy docs\

Even though the archive name is ignored with this switch,
an arbitrary dummy archive name has to specified in the command line.

Operations requiring backward seeks are unavailable in this mode.
It includes displaying archive comments, testing the recovery record,
utilizing the quick open information, processing multivolume archives.

Prompts requiring user interaction are not allowed.
Use -o[+|-|r], -p<pwd> or -mes switches to suppress such prompts.

8. New -ep4<path> switch excludes the path prefix when archiving
or extracting if this path is found in the beginning of archived name.
Path is compared with names already prepared to store in archive,
without drive letters and leading path separators. For example:

rar a -ep4texts\books archive c:\texts\books\technical

removes "text\books" from archived names, so they start
from 'technical'.

9. New -mes switch skips encrypted files when extracting or testing.
It replaces the former -p- switch.

10. New -op<path> switch sets the destination folder for 'x' and 'e'
extraction commands. Unlike <path_to_extract\> command line parameter,
this switch also accepts paths without trailing path separator
character.

11. If 'p' command is used to print a file to stdout, informational
messages are suppressed automatically to prevent them mixing
with file data.

12. "Generate archive name by mask" option and switch -ag treat only
first two 'M' characters after 'H' as minutes. Previously any
amount of such characters was considered as minutes.

It makes possible to place the time field before the date,
like -agHHMM-DDMMYY. Previous versions considered all 'M'
in this string as minutes.

13. Maximum allowed size of RAR5 recovery record is increased to 1000%
of protected data size. Maximum number of RAR5 recovery volumes
can be 10 times larger than protected RAR volumes.

Previous WinRAR versions are not able to use the recovery record
to repair broken archives if recovery record size exceeds 99%.
Similarly, previous versions cannot use recovery volumes
if their number is equal or larger than number of RAR volumes.

14. Warning is issued if entered password exceeds the allowed limit
of 127 characters and is truncated. Previously such passwords
had been truncated silently.

15. If archive includes reserved device names, the underscore character
is inserted in the beginning of such names when extracting.
For example, aux.txt is converted to _aux.txt. It is done to prevent
compatibility problems with software unable to process such names.

You can use "Allow potentially incompatible names" option
in "Advanced" part of extraction dialog or command line -oni switch
to avoid this conversion.

16. WinRAR attempts to reset the file cache before testing an archive.
It helps to verify actual data written to disk instead of reading
a cached copy.

17. Multiple -v<size> switches specifying different sizes for different
volumes are now allowed also for ZIP archives:

WinRAR a -v100k -v200k -v300k arcname.zip

Previously multiple -v<size> switches were supported only for
RAR archives.

18. Switches -sl<size> and -sm<size> can be used in WinRAR.exe command
line mode when extracting archives in any supported formats,
provided that such archive includes unpacked file sizes.
Previously these switches could filter files by size only in RAR
and ZIP archives.

19. Newer folder selection dialog is invoked when pressing "Browse" button
in WinRAR "Settings/Paths" page, "Repair" and "Convert" commands,
also as in few other similar places. Previously a simpler XP style
folder selection dialog was opened.

20. When restoring from tray after completing an operation,
WinRAR window is positioned under other opened windows,
to not interfere with current user activities.

21. "650 MB CD" is removed and "2 GB volumes" is added to the list of
predefined volume sizes in "Define volume sizes" dialog invoked
from WinRAR "Settings/Compression".

22. "Rename" command selects the file name part up to the final dot.
Previously it selected the entire name.

23. If SFX archive size exceeds 4 GB, an error message is issued
during compression, immediately after exceeding this threshold.
Previously this error was reported only after completing compression.

Executables of such size cannot be started by Windows.

24. Command line -en switch is not supported anymore.
It created RAR4 archives without the end of archive record.

End of archive record permits to gracefully skip external data
like digital signatures.

25. Bugs fixed:

a) when editing a file inside of .rar or .zip archive,
WinRAR created a new SFX archive instead of updating an existing
archive if "Create SFX archive" option was set in the default
compression profile;

b) the total progress could be displayed incorrectly when using
-oi, -f, -u switches or appropriate GUI options;

c) "Find files" command with "Use all tables" option and command line
"it" commands failed to find strings in UTF-16 encoding.

 

WinRAR 6.11 Beta 1 Released (February 22, 2022)
Website
Download
Changelog

Spoiler: Changes v6.11 Beta 1

Version 6.11 beta 1

1. Added support for Gz archives with large archive comments.
Previously the extraction command failed to unpack gz archives
if comment size exceeded 16 KB.

2. Archive comments in gz archives are displayed in the comment window
and recognized by "Show information" command. Large comments are
shown partially.

Previous versions didn't display Gzip comments.

3. Reserved device names followed by file extension, such as aux.txt,
are extracted as is in Windows 11 even without "Allow potentially
incompatible names" option or -oni command line switch.
Unlike previous Windows versions, Windows 11 treats such names
as usual files.

Device names without extension, such as aux, still require these
options to be unpacked as is regardless of Windows version.

4. Switch -mes can be also used to suppress the password prompt
and abort when adding files to encrypted solid archive.

5. Additional measures to prevent extracting insecure links are
implemented.

6. Bugs fixed:

a) if password exceeding 127 characters was entered when unpacking
an encrypted archive with console RAR, text after 127th character
could be erroneously recognized as user's input by different
prompts issued later;

b) wrong archived file time could be displayed in overwrite prompt
when extracting a file from ZIP archive. It happened if such
archive included extended file times and was created in another
time zone. It didn't affect the actual file time, which was set
properly upon extraction.

 

Thanks for the changelog. I don't seem to be able to access their site today. Which also means I can't download it directly either. Nor do the Majorgeeks links work for me. Don't know if it's a DNS issue or if it's down.

 

Thanks for checking. That said it seems to work here now too so I'm assuming it was a temporary outage, possibly localized.

 

WinRAR 6.11 Released (March 4, 2022)
Website
Download
Changelog

Spoiler: Changes v6.11

Version 6.11

1. Added support for Gz archives with large archive comments.
Previously the extraction command failed to unpack gz archives
if comment size exceeded 16 KB.

2. Archive comments in gz archives are displayed in the comment window
and recognized by "Show information" command. Large comments are
shown partially.

Previous versions didn't display Gzip comments.

3. Reserved device names followed by file extension, such as aux.txt,
are extracted as is in Windows 11 even without "Allow potentially
incompatible names" option or -oni command line switch.
Unlike previous Windows versions, Windows 11 treats such names
as usual files.

Device names without extension, such as aux, still require these
options to be unpacked as is regardless of Windows version.

4. Switch -mes can be also used to suppress the password prompt
and abort when adding files to encrypted solid archive.

5. Additional measures to prevent extracting insecure links are
implemented.

6. Bugs fixed:

a) if password exceeding 127 characters was entered when unpacking
an encrypted archive with console RAR, text after 127th character
could be erroneously recognized as user's input by different
prompts issued later;

b) wrong archived file time could be displayed in overwrite prompt
when extracting a file from ZIP archive. It happened if such
archive included extended file times and was created in another
time zone. It didn't affect the actual file time, which was set
properly upon extraction.

 

► WinRAR 6.20 released (January 23, 2023)

• Website
• Download
• Changelog