Our favorite compression tool, WinRAR, has just released version 7. WinRAR supports all the file compression formats including ZIP.
We like the RAR format mostly for the ‘Solid’ option which can give better compression across many files in the same archive. ‘Solid’ is great for making a smaller archive of many already compressed files like Office documents and photos.
It will handle pretty much any other compressed file you throw at it including ZIP, TAR, 7-Zip, ISO and CAB. Strong AES-256 encryption is available.
WinRAR is featured in the Office Watch book Everyday Backups – protecting your documents, photos and personal info.
Go to https://www.win-rar.com/download.html?&L=0 to download the latest trial version, most likely Windows 64-bit for Windows 10/11. The trial version works for 40 days and will continue to operate after that with some features disabled.
WinRAR v7 has mostly nerdy changes related to the compression dictionary that can now be larger than 1GB for RAR archives with many or very large files.
The ‘Mark of the Web’ file security info is now recognized by WinRAR.
See the full WinRAR v7 update list for more details.
