<!--
// Comment added 2020-Mar-19

I originally posted this in October 2014. Here I am
commenting about it 5.5 years later, and it's because of the
very specific traffic this gets.

About once or twice a year, someone will do a search for
"7zip vs RAR", find this article, and use it to try and
spark discussion on which is the better archive format.

Here is everything you need to know if you care about such
things.

Basically put, if you use 7-Zip, data is lost at some point.
It's not a matter of if but when. If you trust the 7z
format, you're a fool.

I'll tell you exactly what will happen. You'll happily use
7-Zip and feel good about it because it's free. But then one
day you'll go to open one of your 7z archives and uh-oh,
corrupted. You'll attempt to fix it using a zip recovery
tool. It won't work. Now you're fucked. Whatever was in that
archive is gone forever. And of course it will be that one
archive you *really* wanted to get the data from out of all
the 7z archives you have.

RAR is the absolute best archive format you can possibly use
because it has the recovery record feature. It's a little
snapshot of the archive and the #1 reason you should
*always* use RAR and never use 7z.

The recovery record feature has saved my ass in the past,
and to date is the *only* archive repair tool I've ever used
that actually works.

// Comment added 2020-Mar-20

Don't need password protection or encryption for your
archives in Windows 10? Use the built-in ZIP or TAR. Yes,
TAR is built-in to Windows. A lot of people don't know
this.

ZIP (GUI): 

Right-click any file or folder, select "Send To" and then
"Compressed (zipped) folder"

ZIP (PowerShell): 

Compress-Archive -Path "files or folders to add"
"name-zip-file-here.zip"

There are more Compress-Archive options for adding multiple
folders and setting compression levels, Google it.

TAR (Command Prompt or PowerShell)

tar -cvf archive.tar "path to files or folders"

TAR+GZIP (Command Prompt or PowerShell)

tar -cvzf archive.tar.gz "path to files or folders"

The TAR app in Windows 10 more or less acts the same as the
Linux version. Again, if you need to look up more settings,
Google it.

// Comment added 2021-Mar-13

Some things have changed. A lot, actually. I'm now using
7-Zip, completely dumped WinRAR and won't go back to it. And
yeah, there's a story behind this. I'll give you the
condensed version.

In short, Windows Defender hates RAR archives. I discovered
that if a RAR5 archive has slightly corrupt file data,
Defender will flag that with a false positive and tell you
to delete it, but doesn't have a problem with slightly
corrupted ZIP, 7z, tar or gzip archives. This literally
means if you download a RAR from somewhere or have a
FAT32/exFAT flash drive where the file system gets a little
corrupted over time and slightly corrupts archive files
(which sometimes happens on well-used flash drives since
FAT32/exFAT isn't a journaling file system), Defender
doesn't like that at all. This was enough of a problem to
make me stop using WinRAR.

The way I handle archives now is that for nonsensitive data,
I use ZIP, and for sensitive data where I need file
encryption and password protection, I use 7z. And for any
archive that goes over 1GB, I split that just to be on the
safe side.

Yes, I lose RAR's recovery record feature by not using
WinRAR. But it's not worth using since Windows 10 thinks any
RAR5 archive that's a few bytes off will destroy your
computer. And I doubt that will ever change.

// Comment added 2021-Oct-31

Still using 7-Zip, and now I have a recovery record feature
with MultiPar:

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/multipar.html

MultiPar is definitely more than good enough to easily
create recovery records for 7-Zip archives. More
importantly, I can automate it in batch files for my nightly
backup.

Yeah, that basically means I literally have no more reason
to use WinRAR anymore. Another nice thing about MultiPar is
that it will create recovery records for *any* file, files
or folders.

// Comment added 2023-Dec-23

Been using Linux for a little over 6 months now and don't
even bother with WinRAR anymore since that's a Windows
program. This is how to create a 7z archive and then add a
recovery record, at least where Kubuntu is concerned:

1. Enter directory where the files are and create archive.

7z a archive.7z *

2. Create recovery records with par2.

par2 c archive.7z

3. Verify afterward.

par2 v archive.7z.par2

If you need to repair the archive:

par2 r archive.7z.par2

That's it. Done. Back up the files to wherever.
-->
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<h1>Why I still use RAR instead of 7z</h1>
<p align="center"><img decoding="async" width="210" height="170" title="WinRAR" alt="WinRAR" src="https://menga.net/wp-content/uploads/140912144408.gif"></p>
<p>Nerdy computer crap time.</p>
<p><span id="more-93912"></span></p>
<p>Long ago back in the days before the modern internet, I used BBSes. And pretty much every BBS had a files area where you could upload or download stuff. The vast majority of that stuff was in archive files.</p>
<p>First it started with ZIP files, then LHA and then finally ARJ before the BBS fell out of favor with the masses once internet came around.</p>
<p>Even though ARJ was vastly superior compared to more or less everything else at the time, ZIP became popular again because of Windows. Specifically, it was Windows XP because that OS and every Windows since has native support to extract ZIP archive files where you can just double-click on one to open it up.</p>
<p>Time goes on, and two other formats start getting popular, RAR and 7-Zip or 7z for short.</p>
<p>RAR was never free <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R4YI2XC/?tag=ricmen-20">unless you use the mobile version</a>. 7-Zip has always been free...</p>
<p>...but I'm still using RAR, and I'll explain why.</p>
<p>7z, while the superior format that crunches data better and does it faster, suffers from a few things that make it inferior compared to WinRAR.</p>
<p>First, you can't preview images in a 7z file. If you have a 7z archive full of JPG images, open it up and double-click, you'll get an error in Windows that says the image can't be viewed. WinRAR on the other hand has no problem previewing images.</p>
<p>This has been a very longstanding complaint of 7z users, and to date, nothing has been done about it, and it's probably true nothing will be done about it.</p>
<p>Second is the ridiculous .001, .002, .003 file extension crapola for 7z archives split into volumes.</p>
<p>The way RAR does it is that when you split an archive into volumes, the file names are file.part01.rar, file.part02.rar, and so on. And the cool thing is that with all the files in the same directory, <em>you can click on any one of them</em> and the whole archive will be opened up.</p>
<p>The way 7z does it is file.7z.001, file.7z.002, and so on. And, of course, .001 is not an automatically associated extension when you install 7-Zip, so double-clicking on the file doesn't do anything. You have to <em>know</em> to go into 7-Zip options and set that .001 association.</p>
<p>All 7z archive files should end with .7z, period. But they don't. When you split, you get the numbered crap.</p>
<p>Third - and this is a biggie - 7z has no internal way of making a recovery record. This one takes a bit to explain.</p>
<p>The absolute best feature of RAR is that you can add in a recovery record that allows the archive to be repaired if the overall file(s) get corrupted. When you select the option to use a recovery record, it will increase the size of the archive by a percentage you specify (usually 1% or 2%). If at some point the archive gets damaged, it can read the recovery portion and <em>fix</em> it so the archive works again.</p>
<p>7z has no recovery record option whatsoever. The only way to do it is by creating a PAR file and then appending it to the 7z. Screw that. I mean, yeah, it works, but why bother when it's built right in to RAR?</p>
<h3>Why bother archiving anything?</h3>
<p>Whether you use RAR, 7-Zip or something else, there are a few good reasons to archive things.</p>
<ol>
<li>It's the easiest way to put a bunch of files into a single file. Collections of photos, videos, documents, a combo of all three, whatever.
<li>It's the easiest way to archive projects. For example, recording sessions usually produce a good amount of files. After making a bunch of them, your hard drive gets clogged up with these things. Putting each project in an archive and then dumping elsewhere (DVD, memory card, external drive, etc.) makes managing that stuff a whole lot easier.
<li>It's the easiest way to securely store stuff. If you have sensitive documents you don't want other people seeing, stuffing them into an archive with a strong password in front of it and file encryption on top of that (which both RAR and 7z have) would be a very tough thing for someone to bust into. Not impossible, but really difficult. If there is anything you're putting in webmail or the cloud right now you consider sensitive, archive it first, choose to use a password and encrypt the file names, <em>then</em> upload it to the cloud.<br />
<!--

<li>[Yes, I've edited this last point out because some nerds disagree with it even though it's true and I've actually seen it happen.] It offers better file stability. Old files suffer from a thing known as bit rot, especially if they're files that get used often. You've most likely experienced bit rot from an MP3 you downloaded where a chunk of the data was corrupted and had "chirping" noises when played back. That's bit rot. Files in an archive - even if no recovery record is present - have a "protective shell" around them of sorts that will allow it to extract correctly, even if the archive has some slight bit rot going on with it. This is, incidentally, why a really, really old ZIP file still works, even if it was sitting on a web server and had been downloaded millions of times.</li>

--></ol>
<p>There are legitimate reasons to use archive files. RAR makes it easier for me to archive stuff.</p>
<p>Said honestly, if 7-Zip had the ability to preview images properly, I'd probably switch to it even though it doesn't have a recovery record option. When I archive my digital camera photos, I like easy preview access from within the archive, but 7-Zip just doesn't do that. I could deal with the no-recovery-option and the stupid .001 files, but no image previews? Total deal-breaker.</p>
<p class="orig-pub-date">Published 2014 Sep 12</p>


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