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- RAR - What's new in the latest version
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- Version 3.40 beta 1
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- 1. "Fastest" (-m1) RAR compression method has been modified
- to provide much higher compression speed and lower ratio.
- It may be useful for tasks requiring the high speed like
- regular backups.
-
- You may increase "Fastest" speed even more selecting 64KB
- compression dictionary instead of default 4MB.
-
- 2. WinRAR is able to decompress archives created by Unix 'compress'
- tool (.Z files). Like GZIP and BZIP2 archives, WinRAR opens
- tar.Z and .taz files in one step, so users do not need to
- unpack .tar manually.
-
- 3. WinRAR is able to decompress archives created by 7-Zip
- (.7z files). "Find" command is not supported for this
- archive type.
-
- 4. New "Security" dialog in WinRAR settings:
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- a) "File types to exclude from extracting" option to prevent
- extracting of potentially dangerous files like .exe, .scr
- and .pif;
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- b) "Propose to select virus scanner" option modifies behavior
- of "Scan archive for viruses" command. You may turn it off
- if you wish to skip the virus scanner selection dialog.
-
- 5. New command line switch -ep3 allows to save and restore
- full file paths including the drive letter.
-
- WinRAR shell equivalent of -ep3 switch are options
- "Store full paths including drive letter" in "Files/File paths"
- page of archiving dialog and "Extract absolute paths"
- in "Advanced/File paths" page of extracting dialog.
-
- 6. You may select and compress disks directly in "My Computer"
- view in WinRAR shell. Just choose "My Computer" in WinRAR
- address bar, select disks to compress and press "Add".
- If you selected more than one item, WinRAR will automatically
- set "Store full paths including drive letter" archiving mode.
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- 7. If you selected several disks in Windows Explorer "My Computer"
- view and started archiving from context menu, WinRAR will
- automatically set "Store full paths including drive letter" mode
- when compressing them.
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- 8. New command line switch -oc to restore NTFS "Compressed" attribute
- when extracting files. RAR always saves "Compressed" attribute
- when creating an archive, but does not restore it unless -oc switch
- has been specified.
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- WinRAR shell equivalent of -oc switch is "Set attribute Compressed"
- option in "Advanced" part of extracting dialog.
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- 9. Starting from this version RAR volumes contain the volume number
- field.
-
- If archive was created by WinRAR 3.40 or newer, you may view
- the volume number in the top line of "Info" dialog and
- in the address bar.
-
- In the command line mode the volume number is displayed
- by 'L' and 'V' commands in the line with the total volume
- information.
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- This feature may be useful if original volume names are lost
- and you need to rename volumes to correct names.
-
- 10. Commands 'L' and 'V' display NTFS "Compressed" attribute
- in archive listing.
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- 11. Switch -ag may include an optional text enclosed in '{' and '}'
- characters. This text is inserted into archive name.
- For example: -agHH{hours}MM{minutes}
-
- Same feature is supported in "Generate archive name by mask"
- field of WinRAR archiving dialog.
-
- 12. If switch -ac is specified, RAR will not reset "Archive"
- attribute of those files, which size or modification time
- was changed after starting the archiving operation.
-
- So files modified after placing them to archive and before
- clearing "Archive" attribute, will be included to next incremental
- backup. The same is true for WinRAR "Clear attribute "Archive"
- after compressing" GUI option.
-
- 13. If you use "Add to favorites" command inside of archive
- subfolder, WinRAR will save the subfolder and restore it
- when accessing to this favorite item. Previous versions
- were able to restore only the root archive folder.
-
- 14. When editing archived files, WinRAR proposes to update them
- immediately after detecting that file was changed. Previous
- versions waited until an external editor terminates before
- updating a changed file.
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- 15. If you drop an archive to WinRAR address bar or toolbar,
- WinRAR will display its contents even if other archive
- is opened now. Previous versions proposed to add a dropped
- archive to browsing one.
-
- You may still drop an archive to WinRAR file list if you
- need to add it to browsing archive.
-
- 16. Corrected processing of corrupt LZH archives to exclude
- a possible crash when reading corrupt LZH file headers.
-
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- Version 3.30
-
- 1. New "Scan archive for viruses" command unpacks an archive to
- temporary folder and checks its contents with antivirus software
- installed on a user's computer.
-
- 2. New "Generate report" command creates a report containing
- the list of usual or archived files. You may optionally include
- a file size, date and CRC to report, choose the sort order,
- save report to file, send it to printer or copy to clipboard.
-
- 3. New "Benchmark and hardware test" command allows to compare
- performance of RAR compression algorithm on different computers
- and detect possible errors caused by hardware failures.
-
- 4. New "Print file" command is able to print both archived
- and usual files.
-
- 5. New "Tools" menu contains "Wizard", "Show information",
- "Convert archives", "Find files", "Repair", "Convert to SFX"
- commands previously available in "Commands" menu and new
- "Scan archive for viruses", "Generate report", "Benchmark
- and hardware test" commands.
-
- 6. WinRAR supports decompression of ZIP archives created using
- "Enhanced deflate" method.
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- 7. WinRAR pre-allocates disk space for files unpacked
- from ZIP archives. It helps to reduce disk fragmentation,
- especially on NTFS disks. Previous versions did it only
- for RAR archives.
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- 8. Now it is possible to decompress TAR, GZIP and ISO9660
- archives of any size. Previous versions could not handle
- files of these formats, if they exceeded 2 GB.
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- 9. Status bar displays the current operation progress,
- when reading contents of large tar.gz and tar.bz2 archives.
-
- 10. "Next volume" dialog allows to modify not only a name,
- but also a size of next volume, so you may create volumes
- of different size. This dialog is displayed if you create
- volumes on removable disks or set "Pause after each volume"
- option in "Advanced" part of archiving dialog.
-
- 11. Several -v<size> switches can be specified in the command
- line mode to set different sizes for different volumes.
- For example, 'rar a -v100k -v200k -v300k arcname' command
- sets 100 KB size for first volume, 200KB for second
- and 300KB for all following volumes.
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- 12. More WinRAR commands support Unicode in archive names.
- If your Windows is NT based (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, 2003),
- you may modify archives with non-English names regardless
- of Regional Settings.
-
- 13. Small and some of large icons have been updated by
- Francesco Indrio.
-
- 14. "Diagnostic message" window can be resized. It preserves
- new dimensions and restores them when activated the next time.
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- 15. "Mode..." button in the archiving progress window allows to
- change the compression method and "Turn PC off when done"
- option on the fly.
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- 16. WinRAR supports -cfg- switch in the command line mode.
- It forces WinRAR to ignore options saved in the default
- compression profile and RAR environment variable.
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- 17. WinRAR opens .qpr and .qpk files (QNX packages) in one step,
- like it already does for .tar.gz archives.
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- 18. Extraction command proposes to browse for missing CAB file
- in multivolume CAB sequence instead of "Cannot open" error.
-
- 19. "Rename" command displays a window with information about
- processing files.
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- 20. "Convert" command checks the lowest allowed ratio before
- starting the archive test, so if resulting archive is too large,
- WinRAR does not waste time to test it.
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- 21. "Files to exclude" field in the archiving dialog has "Append"
- button now, so you may browse for excluded files instead of
- entering their names manually.
-
- 22. WinRAR understands quotes inside of parameters in the command
- line mode. For example, "-pmy password" and -p"my password"
- will set the same password. Eariler WinRAR understood only
- the first syntax ("-pmy password") and only the console RAR
- handled both.
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- 23. Data analyzing module is tuned to detect executable and audio
- data more accurately. Erroneous selecting of executable
- and audio algorithms could reduce the compression ratio
- in some situations.
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- 24. WinRAR understands the command line switch -hp without
- a parameter and requests to enter a password when processing it.
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- 25. WinRAR preserves NTFS streams of updated archives, if archive
- and temporary files are resided on NTFS partition. For example,
- if you entered some comments in "Summary" section of archive
- properties, they will not be lost when updating an archive
- using WinRAR. Do not confuse NTFS streams of archive itself
- and streams of archived files, latter can be preserved
- by previous versions as well.
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- 26. It is possible to prohibit change of archiving password
- with "WinRAR\Policy\Password" Registry value. This feature
- may help to avoid encrypting of important data in multi-user
- environment. Read "Configuration settings/Registry variables"
- help topic for details.
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- 27. "Select toolbar buttons" dialog allows to specify separators
- after any toolbar button.
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- 28. New console RAR -si[name] switch to compress data from stdin
- (standard input).
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- 29. Console RAR 'vt' and 'lt' commands display symlink target names,
- when listing RAR/Unix archives contained symbolic links.
- These commands also display NTFS stream names, when listing
- WinRAR archives contained streams.
-