WinRAR 5 (32 Bit and 64 Bit) is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. Changes in RAR compression RAR general compression algorithm is optimized for better utilization of several processor cores. While some speed gain is possible even in single processor mode, best results are achieved in multi-core environment. Speed gain depends on data type and average file size. Several cores are utilized more efficiently when compressing large files.
What is New in WinRAR 5.40 Version
1. “Name encoding” submenu in “Options” menu allows to select encoding for archived file names. This selection affects archive browsing and extraction commands. You can use Ctrl+E keyboard shortcut to access this menu quickly.
It can be useful when unpacking an archive without Unicode file names. For example, unpacking a zip file with Chinese archived names in Windows with Russian specified as a language for non-Unicode programs.
2. If RAR recovery volumes (.rev files) are present in the same folder as usual RAR volumes, archive test command verifies .rev contents after completing testing .rar files.
If you wish to test only .rev files without checking .rar volumes, you can select .rev files in WinRAR file list and apply “Test” only to them or run: rar t arcname.part1.rev in the command line.
3. While NTFS file system permits file names with trailing spaces and dots, a lot of Windows programs fail to process such names correctly. If “Allow potentially incompatible names” option in “Advanced” page of extraction dialog is turned off, WinRAR removes trailing spaces and dots, if any, from file names when extracting. This option is turned off by default. Command line RAR also removes trailing spaces and dots when extracting unless -oni switch is specified.
4. Previously “Synchronize archive contents” update mode (-as command line switch) aborted if some of archiving folders could not be read. Now WinRAR continues performing the operation and preserves archived files matching unreadable folders.
5. WinRAR Shift+Del delete command can be used to delete folders containing non-standard file names with trailing spaces and dots. Usual delete to Recycle Bin also as Shift+Del in previous WinRAR versions cannot delete such folders.
Unlike Del command, Shift+Del removes files permanently, they are not moved to Recycle Bin. No additional prompts are issued for files with read-only and system attributes.
6. You can drag folders from folder tree panel and drop them to other programs or Desktop to copy or unpack them. Drag the archive icon in tree panel root to unpack the entire archive.
7. “New folder” button in extraction dialog proposes a new folder name based on archive name instead of generic “New Folder”.
8. Command line RAR version information:
a) if -iver switch is specified, RAR displays the version number and quits. You can run just “RAR -iver”;
b) “x86” or “x64” is displayed in Windows RAR version information both for -iver and in the copyright title for other commands.
9. If -p switch is used without optional <pwd> parameter, a password can be also set with file redirection or pipe. For example: rar -p myarc.rar myfiles < psw.txt
10. Command line RAR treats ‘arcname.partN’ as ‘arcname.partN.rar’ if ‘arcname.partN’ does not exist and ‘arcname.part#.rar’ exists. For example, it is allowed to run: RAR x arcname.part01 to start extraction from arcname.part01.rar
11. Improvements in 7z archives support:
a) “Solid” status is correctly detected and reported for 7z archives in WinRAR “Info” command;
b) dictionary size is displayed for LZMA and LZMA2 7z archives in WinRAR “Info” command;
c) unknown packed size for files inside of 7z solid block is denoted as ‘?’ instead of ‘0’ when browsing the archive contents in WinRAR.
12. Maximum comment length for RAR archives is increased from 64 to 256 KB. Since SFX script commands are stored in archive comment, it allows a longer main and license text in SFX archives.
13. Size of default WinRAR viewer font is scaled up properly in Windows high DPI mode.
14. Switch -scul can be used to process big endian UTF-16 list files as well, provided that they have a correct byte order mark. Previously it allowed only little endian file lists.
15. Minimum supported Windows version is Windows XP SP3 now. WinRAR will not run in Windows XP without service packs.
16. “Settings/File list/Allow all uppercase names” option is removed. This option was intended to simplify transition from MS DOS to Windows and is not needed anymore.
17. Bugs fixed:
a) WinRAR 5.31 x64 “Compress and email” command did not work with Microsoft Outlook x64;
b) if WinRAR 5.31 version for one of right to left languages was installed in Windows with English or other not right to left system language, WinRAR could change Windows Explorer layout to right to left;
c) if archive was stored in a folder without “Write” permission and if archive contents was extracted with drag and drop to a writable folder, WinRAR issued an unnecessary privileges elevation prompt.
WINRAR 32 Bit had to increase memory requirements to achieve higher compression speed. General RAR compression algorithm allocates about 120 MB comparing to 40 MB in WINRAR 4.
WINRAR 64 Bit text compression algorithm cannot utilize several CPU cores efficiently, so its performance in multiprocessor environment is much lower than for general algorithm. Also its decompression speed is much lower than in general algorithm regardless of CPU number. So we decided to disable the text algorithm by default. If you need maximum possible compression ratio for plain text data regardless of speed, you can enable the text compression in “Advanced compression parameter” dialog. Press “Compression” button on “Advanced” page of archiving dialog to access it. You can also change this option permanently in default compression profile; In the command line mode the text compression can be enabled with much switch.
“Fastest” (-m1) compression mode also supports several processor cores now. In 4.11 it could use only a single processor core. WINRAR x64 general decompression algorithm speed is slightly improved,though not same extent as RAR compression. RAR decompression is not able to use several processor cores, so its performance does not depend on a number of cores. Changes in ZIP compression: now ZIP compression supports several processor cores resulting in noticeably higher performance in multi-core environment. Single CPU ZIP compression is also faster than in 4.11; Memory use for ZIP compression is increased to about 15 MB.
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