WinRAR 7 introduces 64GB dictionaries, backend improvements

The latest beta of the powerful archive manager. Create and decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from the internet.

WinRAR is a powerful compression tool with many integrated additional functions to help you organize your compressed archives.

WinRAR puts you ahead of the crowd when it comes to compression. By consistently creating smaller archives, WinRAR is often faster than the competition. This will save you disc space, transmission costs AND valuable working time as well.

Features

• WinRAR supports all popular compression formats (RAR, ZIP, CAB, ARJ, LZH, ACE, TAR, GZip, UUE, ISO, BZIP2, Z and 7-Zip).
• WinRAR is ideal for multimedia files. WinRAR automatically recognizes and selects the best compression method. The special compression algorithm compresses multimedia files, executables and object libraries particularly well.
• WinRAR allows you to split archives into separate volumes easily, making it possible to save them on several disks for example.
• WinRAR is also ideal, if you are sending data through the web. Its 128 bit password encryption and its authenticated signature technology will give you the peace of mind you have been looking for.
• WinRAR is shareware, meaning you have the chance to thoroughly test it. The program can be used absolutely free of charge for 40 days!
• WinRAR licenses are valid for all available language and platform versions. If you have purchased several licenses, you can even mix versions to meet your own personal needs.
• WinRAR gives you all future Updates for free.

What’s New

• Compression dictionary sizes larger than 1 GB are supported for RAR archive format. Depending on the amount of physically available memory, dictionary up to 64 GB can be selected.
  • Not power of 2 dictionary sizes can be specified for dictionaries exceeding 4 GB. So we are not limited to 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 series and can use values like 5 GB or 22 GB.
  • Archives with dictionaries exceeding 4 GB can be unpacked only by WinRAR 7.0 or newer.
  • Increasing the dictionary size can improve the compression ratio for large files with distant repeated blocks, like virtual machine disk images. It also can be efficient for sets of large similar files in a solid archive, such as a collection of software ISO images differing by version or localization.
• WinRAR issues a prompt allowing to cancel or continue if dictionary size in extracted RAR archive exceeds “Maximum dictionary size allowed to extract” parameter in “Settings/Compression”. It is done to prevent the unexpected excessive memory allocation.
  • In the command line mode by default WinRAR refuses to unpack archives with dictionary exceeding 4 GB. Use -md or -mdx to allow unpacking dictionaries up to and including the specified size. Unlike -md, -mdx is applied to extraction only and can be added to RAR environment variable, not affecting archiving commands.
• “Define dictionary sizes” dialog in “Settings/Compression” can be used to customize dictionary sizes proposed in the drop down list associated with “Dictionary size” field in “Archive name and parameters” dialog.
• Alternate search algorithm, optimized to locate longer and more distant repeated data blocks, can be used when creating RAR archives.
  • It helps to improve the compression ratio and sometimes speed for redundant data like big text files.
  • It increases memory usage and might reduce the compression speed for some types of data. It can be turned on or off with “Long range search” options in “Advanced compression parameters” dialog or with -mcl[+|-] switch. If “Auto” option is selected, WinRAR applies the long range search depending on the compression method, dictionary size and other parameters.
  • This algorithm is required for dictionaries exceeding 4 GB and turning it off is ignored for such dictionaries.
• Much slower and more exhaustive repeated data search and compression algorithm can be enabled with “Exhaustive search” option in “Advanced compression parameters” dialog or with -mcx switch. It might provide the additional compression gain for some types of redundant data, but at much lower compression speed.
  • Long range search is needed to implement this mode efficiently, so the exhaustive search option activates it automatically.
  • Both long range and exhaustive search option do not affect the compatibility of created archives. So if dictionary size is in 128 KB – 4 GB range, archives created with these search options can be unpacked by all WinRAR versions beginning from 5.0.
• Maximum path length limit is increased from 2047 to 65535 characters.
• Creating archives in RAR 4.x format isn’t supported anymore.
• Options and switches specific for this format are removed.
• It doesn’t affect RAR 4.x archives decompression, which is included into WinRAR.
• “Propagate Mark of the Web” option in “Settings/Security” dialog controls assigning the archive Mark of the Web to extracted files.
  • It is possible to prohibit propagating, allow it for several predefined file groups, for all files or for files matching user defined file masks.
  • Mark of the Web is the security zone information added by Internet browsers to downloaded files. It can be used by various software for security purposes.
  • It is supported only by GUI WinRAR. Console RAR doesn’t propagate Mark of the Web regardless of this option.
• “Attributes” column can be enabled in “Settings/File list/Columns”. It displays file attribute abbreviations, such as ‘A’ for “Archive” and ‘D’ for directory.
  • If file attribute isn’t among those recognized by WinRAR, the numeric value of file attributes is also displayed.
• This value uses hexadecimal format for Windows attributes or octal format for Unix attributes.
• “Benchmark” command allows to specify the exact number of threads and copy results to clipboard. Information about WinRAR and Windows versions, CPU and memory is added to benchmark window.
• “Remove redundant folders from extraction path” option in “Settings/Paths” is now applicable also to extraction commands invoked from WinRAR user interface and to multiple archives unpacked to separate folders. It removes a destination path component, only if its name matches both the archive name and root archived folder name, provided that there are no other folders or files in archive root.
  • For example, it will remove one of “Pictures” in the destination path if we unpack Pictures.rar containing the root “Pictures” folder to “Pictures” destination.
  • Previously it worked only for a single archive extracted from context menu and didn’t check if archived folder name matches the last destination path component.
• “Word wrap in comment” option in “Interface” options group in “Settings/General” toggles the word wrap mode in archive comment window.
• Dictionary size data in archive information dialog is now available for .bz2, .lz, .tar.bz2, .tar.gz, .tar.lz, .tar.zst archives.
• Switch -ol- prohibits archiving and extracting symbolic links.
• Switches -sl[u] and -sm[u] recognize [k|K|m|M|g|G|t|T] size units for kilobytes, thousands of bytes, megabytes, millions of bytes, gigabytes, billions of bytes, terabytes, trillions of bytes. If unit character is ‘b’, ‘B’ or not present, bytes are assumed. Previously these switches accepted bytes only.
• SFX TempMode command accepts the optional @set:user parameter allowing to modify temporary folder permissions, so only the current user can access it. It prohibits a local user to replace files in a temporary folder if SFX is started under another account.
  • It also can be enabled with “Restrict folder access” option in “Advanced SFX options/Modes” dialog.
  • Some installers might fail to start in a folder created with @set:user parameter.
• File permissions and NTFS alternate streams are not saved for hard link entries. They are saved only for the source file these entries refer to. It allows to reduce the archive size, because such file properties are automatically propagated to hard links copies when extracting.
• Keyboard shortcuts, such as Ctrl+A to select all files or Alt+E to unpack found archives, are now functional in “Search results” window also while search is still in progress. Previously they were available only after completing search.
• Switch -v[unit] recognizes ‘t’ and ‘T’ as terabytes and trillions of bytes for volume size units.
• Warning is issued if leading ‘-‘ character is missing in a parameter specified in “Additional switches” field of WinRAR archiving and extraction dialogs. Also it is issued for parameters lacking ‘-‘ in RAR environment variable and rar.ini file.
• Previously such malformed parameters were ignored silently.
• “Convert archives” command displays the smooth total operation progress.
• Previously the total progress was updated abruptly after converting an archive and was visible only when processing multiple archives.
• Proper progress is displayed when compressing symbolic link targets.
• “Integrate WinRAR into shell” option in WinRAR “Settings/Integration” is grayed out if “GlobalIntegration=0” is present in winrar.ini file.

Bugs fixed

• “User defined archive extensions” field in “Settings/Integration” was not saved if winrar.ini was used to store settings and WinRAR was started under non-administrator user account.

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