So if you have received a Rar file you will need to download and install some third party software to open it. No computer operating system has built-in support for the Rar archive format. The contents of the archive must be extracted to a folder on your hard drive before they can be used. However, you can't run a program directly from a Rar file. They also provide a convenient way to package and send groups of related files. Rar files occupy less storage space and take less time to send or download. This is called 'lossless compression.' By contrast, the compression methods used to create JPG photo image files or MP3 music files are called 'lossy compression' because some of the quality of the original image or sound is lost during the compression process. For this last reason, Rar files are often used by computer users in Russia and other countries that use different alphabets.įiles stored in a Rar archive will decompress to exactly their original state.

Other benefits of the Rar file format include redundancy, which can enable damaged archives to be repaired, and support for international character sets, allowing files with non-English filenames to be stored. 'Rar' is a development of the Zip compression method invented by a Russian programmer Eugene Roshal (hence the name, Roshal Archive.) The Rar format uses advanced compression algorithms that can create some of the smallest archives - typically 8 to 30 per cent smaller than Zip archives - but the penalty is that compression may take a long time. There are many different compression techniques in use today. In short, Rar files are a space-saving way of storing single files or groups of related files. 'Compressed' means that mathematical techniques have been used to reduce the space needed to store the files, so that the size of the archive may be much smaller than the total size of the files it contains. It may even contain folders full of files, much like folders on your hard disk. The term 'Archive' means that the file may contain not just one, but several files. Download our recommended Windows Rar file extractor

Rar file opener for windows