WinRAR vs Zip vs 7zip vs Others
 

Something I've always wondered is why people still use WinRAR as their main archiving tool of choice. 7z has been around for a while now and has proven to have a better compression ratio on pretty much everything. So what are your opinions on sticking with .rar instead of moving to .7z or a different archive type?

I use 7zip, but winrar still more popular I think, thats why many people using it

Even though the program type suggests it, the compression ratio is not (and never was) the main reason to use one archiver instead of the other.

If you need an archiver for yourself or for a small environment, you choose the one which has all the features you need and which has a good backward and forward compatibility.

If you need to serve a bigger environment, you choose the one with the highest compatibility and acceptance.

This is the reason why ZIP (and not RAR or 7z or something else) is used for pretty much anything.

WinRAR has good compression too, but it's default lowered for performance ...
Some my advantages that beats other archivers:
- very good customizable self extracting archives
- very good command line support for automatizing tasks
- can use all your threads/cpu for packing/unpacking = good speed
- good recovering possibility
- can detect type of files and auto choose right compression
- file extension order in archive - good for big archives, if you need look at e.g. *.txt it will extract very fast and don't need seek through whole archive
- very strong crypto

I'm not sure about WinRAR's crypto. It's a proprietary software and I don't remember anyone checking it for some bugs/backdoors. On the other hand 7zip is opensource and thus more preferable in respect to crypto. Besides its crypto was checked by one guy who knows a thing or two in crypto stuff.

hxxp://www.rarlab.com/rar_add.htm

there is UnRAR source code, structure format, crypto source you can check it :-)

When it comes to any software tools (including compression tools), habit is also a major driving force.

It's only fairly recently that I've started to use 7zip and it's now become the standard for our company use. But for a long time, ARJ was the preferred choice.

WinRAR has one thing that Zip/7Zip doesn't - support for packing the files including their NTFS streams.

Now I'm not saying it's very useful (or more important than speed or compression ratio)... more of a curiosity. But if you wanted to pack files including the Internet Zone information for some reason (which IE used to store in NTFS streams, AFAIK), it could be helpful. :-)

I'd also say many people use the packer (and especially the archive format) they are used to; the change is slow, and often needs to be pushed by something your current packer just can't do and you need it.

I love winrar because of easy password insertion.

Never use 7z for any valuable data, for temporary junk only. Rar is a best choice, especialy due error correction (Reed-Solomon). I seen a lot topics about all 7z packed data lost (possible via a few erroneous bits in archive). Built-in support 7z in Far is solely reason for me sometimes (rarely) to use 7z for noncritical tasks.

7Zip (powerful and free). I never encountered problems with 7z files.
I even donated a few buck to Oleh.
:)

7z creator name is Igor.

Sure. My mistake.

Can't say I have ever ran into this issue before since starting to use 7z. Been using it for a few years now too and not once have I had an archive corrupt on me. You sure the fault was 7z and not, perhaps, a HDD starting to fail or something? Not saying it can't be 7z's fault but just never seen that happen before.

atom0s is right, all the times that i had problems with 7z archive was due at HDD defect or CD/DVD/BR bad supports.. I'm using 7z to make also big archives with no problems.. The unique problem with 7z with big archives is that is necessary to open the whole archive to unzip even a single file.. And it takes time...

And i waiting the full support for the rar v5 archives...

Last time I read about problems with large 7z SFX archive (> 100 Gb) on russian site (CyberForum.ru). Problem was intensively tested (600 Gb free on HDD, 28 Gb RAM) - SFX-archive each time was broken for large files. Relatively small archives (up to 30 Gb on some computer was OK). But I'm personally seen as 7z create broken ordinal archives on medium size files (~400 Mb) if allowed memory was very low. I think this is just a BUG - no ErrCode returned or checked inside COM-chain calls or smth like.

Also, no matter if a few bits flipped due disk or transmission error - with Rar ECC procedure it just a few extra clicks to recover damaged data, but 7z archive dead.

Sorry forjumping in so late but Check out for Mr.teddy rogers post on LZMA vs LZMA2 vs WinRAR64.....in depth analysis :)

hxxps://forum.tuts4you.com/topic/19897-lzma-vs-lzma2-vs-winrar64/

Rar Compression is much more efficient in terms of processor usage, memory usage compared to 7z's LZMA / LZMA2 and also good for recovering from damaged archives. My experience is in using Rar compression for data backups of terabytes of data on a weekly basis for the last couple of years, mostly in semi automated manner. Though I get very rare requests for data restores (restoring backed up data from Rar archives), some times I have faced corrupt Rar archives which were repaired with very minimal data loss. 7z was tried parallely, but was abandoned due to too much cpu / mem usage.

Don't know what this discussion is for?
RAR, ZIP, 7Z or whatever, they all are doing their best.

Having 1 735 512 Bytes or 1 386 999 Bytes isn't so much important in time of fast internet.

I'm mostly using WinRAR, it's fast, small archives, it's secure and rebuilding a damaged archive is really working sometimes... :D

May be I'm on wrong way, but why should I change my archiver?

I quite like 7z personally, it is free at least and will not cause trouble when using in a production environment.

7z offers functionalties that is comparable with winrar and winzip.

I think one feature these compression ware need to support is to mount the zipped file as iso images, such as the function of winmount.

Not every one has fast internet. Such as myself. I live in the middle of no where and my net caps at a whopping 150kb/s. So every bit helps with saving space for me to make downloads faster. :(

try PeaZip it supports even more drastic compression formats

Personally, I think 7z is the best.

From the look of it PeaZip is just a front-end for other archivers. Does it offer its own format as well? Don't see anything mentioned on their site for a custom format though.

Either way, looks like a nice alternative UI for all the archives. :)
Thanks for the link.

Winrar uses various filters (compression alogs for diff. sources), 7zip not. Personally I prefer 7zip. But if you guys want test one of the best packer, test nanozip hxxp://nanozip.net/ it is really good.

Am I the only one that is constantly running into corruption issues with the new RAR5 format? It has gone so far that I've been contemplating moving away from Winrar altogether.

It is similar problem I have encountered with winrar the solution is make sure u have x86 and x64 installed on your computer.

That's actually not true - 7Zip also supports filters (x86/x64 executable code, PPC, IA64, ARM, SPARC, delta filter).
WinRAR dropped support for most of the specific filters in v5 (from the changelog: "RAR 5.0 format includes Intel IA-32 executable and delta compression algorithms, but RAR 4.x text, audio, true color and Itanium algorithms are not supported. These excluded algorithms are not efficient for modern data types and hardware configurations").

7zip slow in extracting archives. i use winrar and 7zip.

7zip is free, that's the big differrent with WnRAR ,hahaha

I do agree with this, the decompression is definitely slower then WinRAR. In my case though I can deal with the slow extractions because of my horrible internet speeds for downloads. So I tend to prefer seeing .7z files than .rar heh.

Hopefully some time soon someone will create a better archive format that is both fast and high-compressed.

Present PCs have enough power to use 7z. there is just some seconds diference. but for attachments and sending via email 7z is better.

Personally I have used WinRAR from day one archive speed and compression no complaints.... I guess it also helps when you good speed from you isp.

Well 7z is free and also offers password encryption for example. Never had problems with it so far. As for Zip I can only recommend it compared to WinZip.