RELATED: Benchmarked: What's the Best File Compression Format? That’s probably more formats than you’ll need. It can also extract (but not create) AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR and Z files. 7-Zip can create and extract 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, and WIM files. And now you know exactly how to unpack or open a RAR archive on your Windows PC laptop system using Stuffit Expander.7-Zip supports a variety of different archive types. Unpacked, unarchived, and a new folder appears that contains exactly what’s in the original RAR archive file:ĭone. Ready? Generally it’ll fly through the archival expansion: My file management approach usually has me unpacking things onto the Desktop, which makes it easy to decide what to do at this point. That’s it, moments later it’ll prompt you to decide where to unpack the contents of the archive: Just drag and drop the “.rar” file, as I’m doing here: In Windows 7 and earlier, it’ll show up on your Start menu, but in Windows 8, the app shows up as its own Start Tile:Ĭlick on “StuffIt Expander 2011” and it launches a small window with a drop target. That’s one of my favorite parts about Windows 8, actually, and it’s astonishing that it took this many generations of Windows to get this install management tool included.Īnyway, click on “Yes” and the app will be installed. One more step: which version do you want? I got “Expander 2011 Windows (32-bit version)” for my Windows 8 setup:įinally, finally, it’s ready to start downloading:Ĭhoose “Run” from the options and once the package fully downloads, it’s a pretty simple install:īut wait, we’re on a modern version of Microsoft Windows so you’ll need to give the installer permission to actually add software to your computer: Now you’ll need to register for their mailing list (don’t worry, you can immediately unsubscribe if you don’t want to receive their offers): To proceed with the free version, click on the grey “Download” button on the lower left. Simply click on “Windows” to proceed and you’ll have to decide whether to upgrade to the full Stuffit Deluxe version or just stick with the free Stuffit Expander 2011 Windows: Instead of digging through the Windows App Store, just jump directly to and scroll down to find the expander utility: Here’s a file icon for a “.rar” file on my Windows 8 system:ĭouble click it and you’ll find out that Windows OS has absolutely no idea what to do with files of this type:Īlright. (I actually recommend the Deluxe app which lets you create and manage archives and do a lot more with data management)īut let’s start at the beginning. The unpack utility is free, so it’s a good solution, even if it’s a bit of hoop-jumping to actually get the free version. There are a lot of different programs that can unpack a RAR archive file, but one that I like is the app StuffIt, which has been around for a really long time for both Mac and PC systems. In fact, as you’ll see, double-clicking on it produces a “open with what program?” dialog box, which isn’t really very helpful, all in all. The format is definitely not supported in a stock Microsoft Windows computer, whether you’re running Windows 7, Win8 or an earlier version of Windows. Mostly I see these RAR files show up in the world of Bittorrent and torrent downloads, but I suppose there are other contexts within which they can be utilized. In fact, the abbreviation stands for “Roshal Archive”, named after Russian software engineer, Eugene Roshal who created the archive format as an alternative to ZIP archives. The RAR files you have are indeed archives.
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