What is RAR file?

What is RAR file?

The RAR file (short for Roshal Archive Compressed) is a compressed file or data warehouse that contains one or more other files and folders inside. Imagine a RAR file as a folder on your computer that has files and other folders inside it. However, unlike a regular directory, a RAR file needs special software to open and extract content.

What are the RAR files used for?

You will only run RAR files when downloading computer software. File-sharing sites and software distributors sometimes compress their files into RAR files that can compress it to smaller sizes and allow for faster downloads.

In addition to saving download time, RAR files can also be password protected and encrypted so that others cannot see the content unless you know the password. Most RAR files without passwords are used to store images, documents, videos or other files.

What is RAR file? Picture 1

RAR file is useful in case you have many photos you want to share with everyone. Instead of letting users download each image one by one, you can compress them into RAR files and then share and download quickly. After extracting data inside the RAR file, you can use it as other files in your computer.

How to open RAR file

Windows computers are unable to open RAR files. If you double-click the RAR file without installing specific software to open it, the user will see the message: " Windows cannot open this file '( Windows cannot open this file) or " How do you want to open this type of file (.rar)? " (How do you want to open this type of file?).

RAR is the original format of a storage program called WinRAR. The only problem when using WinRAR is that it is not free. However, before you intend to spend money using WinRAR software, you should know that there are many free compression formats that can do the same but at the same cost as 7-Zip.

Note: Some RAR files are multi-part files and are named 123.part1.rar, 123.part2.rar, etc. These RAR files must also be opened with a special program.

How to open RAR file with 7-Zip

Download 7-Zip and install it. After installation, users should set up to automatically associate with RAR files, to simply double-click a RAR file anywhere on the computer, it will automatically open in 7-Zip. To set up this setting, open 7-Zip File Manager.   From the Tools menu in 7-Zip, select Options . , and check the box next to rar . then click OK to save the changes.

You can also open RAR files with 7-Zip by right-clicking on it and selecting 7-Zip > Open archive from the context menu that pops up.

Note: If you are processing multiple RAR files, first select all the different parts of the RAR file and then right-click on one of them. From the menu, select 7-Zip > Extract file .

Other free programs open RAR files

7-Zip is not the only free program that can open RAR files. PeaZip and jZip are two open RAR file openers. Mac users can download and use Keka, The Unarchiver, or Extractor Free RAR to extract RAR files.

Another method is to use Unzip-Online, which allows you to open RAR files without installing any software, as it works through a web browser.

Note: WinZip Free is often recommended as a free RAR file extraction software, but it is actually a trial software. There is no reason to use trial software or buy a RAR extract software while there are many completely free programs mentioned above.

Crack RAR file is password protected

Some RAR files can be password protected. With these RAR files, you need to enter the password before extracting. One problem with password protection RAR files is that you can create your own RAR archive and password security, but in case you forget your password, this is how to crack RAR files.

An effective and free program that can break passwords on a RAR file is RAR Password Cracker Expert. It uses attrack Brute Force and / or Dictionary techniques (with the enclosed word list) to crack the password.

If the above program cannot open the RAR file, you should try Free RAR Password Recovery. It uses Brute forcce technique to guess passwords and also supports numbers, symbols, uppercase, Latin and distance.

How to convert a RAR file

RAR file conversion is to convert it to other formats like 7Z, ZIP, LGH, TGZ, TAR, CAB or some other storage format. Note that RAR files cannot be converted to uncompressed formats such as MP3, PDF, etc.

The fastest and most effective method to convert RAR files to ZIP format or any other popular storage format is to use a free file conversion tool like Zamzar.com or FileZigZag.com. These two RAR converters are online services, meaning you only need to upload the RAR file to the website and download the conversion file.

This free online RAR converter is suitable for small RAR files. If you want to convert a large RAR file, you should use a free tool like IZArc. It's easy to convert RAR files to 7Z, or other archive file formats, from IZArc's Tools menu.

How to create RAR file

Finding a RAR file creation tool is not as easy as finding a tool to extract it. Because software developers must have permission from Alexander Roshal (copyright owner) to recreate the RAR compression algorithm.

The best way to create a RAR file is to use a trial version of WinRAR. It is valid for 30 days. You can compress files in other popular formats like ZIP and 7Z.

Chrome OS is an operating system that supports extracting RAR files, just like Windows supports ZIP decompression. This means that Chrome OS can extract RAR files without third party software.

See more:

1. Which file compression format is best?
2. Free online file compression and decompression services
3. Collection of the best file compression and decompression software available today