RAR5 is coming

[webfork]

So a new compression format is on it's way from the WinRAR folks: http://www.rarlab.com/technote.htm Although I highly recommend not using RAR for anything the least bit important until it gets out of beta, but invariably someone is going to ask: is there a portable RAR5 tool?

Answer: PeaZip (and probably Bandizip)

The comments in the ghacks article seem contradictory about quality, size, and speed, so some independent testing and analysis would be helpful.

[Userfriendly]

The command-line executables are included with the standard WinRAR installs. You can find them inside the program folder. UE gora mod already has it via updater.

I did a quick test by compressing a windows 8 iso which is about 3.33 GB.
RAR (best setting 32 MB dictionary) = 2.95 GB
7z 9.30 (ultra setting 128 MB dictionary) = 2.90 GB
RAR5 (best setting 1024 MB dictionary) = 2.68 GB

The old RAR format was the fastest in compression speed at about 2 min and 30 sec. 7zip was about 5 minutes. RAR5 was the slowest at about 8 minutes.

7z still compresses better for certain files but RAR5 closes the gap. I think this is mainly because winrar can now use a larger dictionary size.

I think the other feature that most people might not use or know about is rar's recovery record which is useful for archiving important data. WinRAR 5 has enhanced it according the the changelog. Recovery records helps repair the rar file in case of data corruption.

update: test another file, a playstation 2 ISO thats 1.40 GB. Results are:
RAR5 = 500 MB
7z = 700 MB
RAR = 900 MB

RAR5 definitely compresses ISO's much better. Also decompresses MUCH faster. RAR5 took 5 seconds to decompress while 7z is at 20 seconds. Also I'm unable to test 7z using anything higher than 256 MB dictionary size because it eats up all of my 16 gigs of ram. It's possible it could compress better but it would be extremely slow and a memory hog.

[carbonize]

At the end of the day though everyone is still going to use zip for anything mainstream just as they use mp3. Only time I have seen rars used in public is when they have broken movies down on torrent sites.

[Midas]

At the end of the day though everyone is still going to use zip for anything mainstream just as they use mp3.

I for one tend to use 7zip/rar for dispatches, but always archive in zip -- even a freshly installed Windows can open it...

[carbonize]

Exactly. With a zip file you know that 99.99% of people will be able to open it. 7z seems to be the method of choice for self extracting archives these days. I think rar is always going to be the good one that nobody actually uses.

[guinness]

Maybe a possible acquisition for Microsoft?

[joby_toss]

7-zip 15.06 beta can extract RAR5 archives:
http://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/discu ... /c611394e/

[webfork]

Thanks Joby... unfortunately as there is no portable version of the 7-zip beta, the only program that can open RAR5 files is PeaZip.

(Just edited the first entry to include this point.)

Edit: Ghacks reports that Bandizip also supports this file format. I couldn't find anything on their site about it.