What is a Rar file?
Rar files are compressed archives. The term "Archive" means that the file may contain not just one, but several files. It may even contain folders full of files, much like folders on your hard disk. "Compressed" means that mathematical techniques have been used to reduce the space needed to store the files, so that the size of the archive may be much smaller than the total size of the files it contains. In short, Rar files are a space-saving way of storing single files or groups of related files.
There are many different compression techniques in use today. "Rar" is a development of the Zip compression method invented by a Russian programmer Eugene Roshal (hence the name, Roshal Archive.) The Rar format uses advanced compression algorithms that can create some of the smallest archives - typically 8 to 30 per cent smaller than Zip archives - but the penalty is that compression may take a long time.
Other benefits of the Rar file format include redundancy, which can enable damaged archives to be repaired, and support for international character sets, allowing files with non-English filenames to be stored. For this last reason, Rar files are often used by computer users in Russia and other countries that use different alphabets.
Files stored in a Rar archive will decompress to exactly their original state. This is called "lossless compression." By contrast, the compression methods used to create JPG photo image files or MP3 music files are called "lossy compression" because some of the quality of the original image or sound is lost during the compression process.
Rar files occupy less storage space and take less time to send or download. They also provide a convenient way to package and send groups of related files. However, you can't run a program directly from a Rar file. The contents of the archive must be extracted to a folder on your hard drive before they can be used.
No computer operating system has built-in support for the Rar archive format. So if you have received a Rar file you will need to download and install some third party software to open it. There are several programs that can open Rar files on both Windows and Mac OS.
Open Rar files in Microsoft Windows
ssIf you want to open Rar files on a Windows PC, Tech-Pro.net recommends BitZipper 2010. We believe that BitZipper 2010 is the best Windows archive manager available. It can open Rar files, Zip files and just about any other compressed or encoded file format you are ever likely to come across in the future.
As well as allowing you to open all these file types, BitZipper 2010 lets you create archives using many of these formats. It's also a fast and flexible backup tool. So it's something you'll find useful for a lot more tasks than opening the occasional Rar archive!
BitZipper 2010 has a Wizard interface that makes it easy to use even if you have never seen a Rar file before. More experienced users can benefit from the a Classic interface, shown on the right, which provides menu and toolbar access to all the product's functions. BitZipper 2010 is a solid and stable archive manager that can handle the largest archives without crashing.