I noticed in http://www.maximumcompression.com/data/summary_mf.php that my favorite, WinRAR is beaten by several other compressors.

My question is, for personal archiving use , do you recommend I just stick with WinRAR or explore these better compressors?

I say you should stick with WinRAR.
From what I know none of the compressors that rank above it in compression rate are that usable. Most (all?) of those are command line applications, which is is a lot harder to use than WinRAR with its GUI.
Another point is compression time. The rule is that better compression requires longer compression time.

I use p7zip myself (7-Zip ported to POSIX), which imo give a nice ballance between compression rate/time.

WinRAR for me all the way!

Reasons why:
• Small download and installed size
• RAR archive format can be unpacked with WinRAR or UnRAR (Win32/DOS/Linux, etc.) and a host of other archivers smart enough to support unpacking RAR archives
• Solid-compression
• One of the best for making very nice professional looking/working self-extracting archives (SFX)
• Recovery record
• Ability to sync archive contents without rebuilding the whole archive from scratch
• Ability to save profiles and create a shortcut to those profiles which makes WinRAR my sole utility for creating all of the backups on my system

If WinRAR didn't exist I would instead use WinAce because it also has a recovery record for its proprietary .ace format, and like WinRAR can store a ton of files into one archive without choking, and has solid-compression, plus both can make nice self-extracting archives although I prefer WinRAR's SFX over anything else because it's easy to use, supports some HTML, can be set to display particular fonts and font sizes via HTML, etc. Although both are commercial apps I believe you get what you pay for when it comes to a good file archiver, even anti-virus vendors Grisoft AVG and Avira AntiVir have their setup files in SFX RAR archives. With that said there are some alright freebies to consider such as TugZip, ICEOWS, etc.

Other than that the only other archiver I'd even consider (due to what it can extract) would be 7-Zip, although I'm not in love with the 7-Zip GUI one bit (I've been spoiled by WinRAR). I do however happen to put the newest stable release version of 7-Zip on all data CD's/DVD's I create just in case someone needs a free/open source archiver that won't time-out.

This is the clincher for me No need for .par files.

It's slow, and sometimes crash. On my system, at least. I don't trust compressors that crash on my system.

Hm... got a point there. Of course my experience with WinRAR, even after 40 days it will only show you a nag screen once when you actually open its file manager (I've registered since). No nag-screen with right-click operations.

Yet my curiosity is piqued by WinRK... anyone used it?

This is the first I've ever heard about it, but then again I haven't looked for another archiver in many years since using WinRAR.

The RK format sounds interesting enough after viewing their website, however my worries about obscure not widely supported formats that can only be unpacked by one application would stear me way clear of it, which is the reason why I like WinRAR and 7-Zip so much because they can unpack each others archive format without any hiccups. If there were other archivers that could unpack the RK format it would ease my paranoia a bit because; if the main app for some unknown reason decided to poop out and stop working on my system, there'd have to be another way to unpack and or convert those archives.

@Andavari:
Hm. You have a really strong point there. Anyways, I downloaded a trial version of WinRK, and... it already expired

Sooo... the question is... should I try to crack it (just to try it. How else can I trial it if it already expired?) or shouldn't I?

PS: But its .chm file is openable... and I have to tell you, the command-line syntax is one of the strangest I've ever seen in my whole life

To quote what's at the very top of every Hydrogenaudio.org page:

You'd be better of contacting the software vendor via their forums to notify them that it's an expired version that can't be used from the get go. If they refuse to allow a trial period I'd say piss on it and them since it wouldn't be worth dealing with, and stay with WinRAR.

Bleh, too much work. Life is short. Better spent to tweak existing system and have some quality time with my gf

After all it has this wackiest command line. Based on the .chm, it seems that to use command line:

• First, enter a command to create an archive
• Next, enter a command to open the archive
• Then, enter the command to add files into the archive
• Finally, enter a command to close the archive

Huh?

Out from my hard disk! Pronto! *rushes to Add/Remove Programs*

Hi

I would recommend 7-zip. It's pretty advanced, and you get to choose the compression method: LZMA, PPmD etc. , and choose compression strength. so you can tailor a compression size/speed tradeoff that's just right for you.
it's compression is pretty strong too. in my informal tests, it easily beat the crap out of WinZIP and WinRAR.

That’s actually one of the “features” I find most retarded in 7-zip. A smart compressor would automatically find the best method for each type of data (like RAR), and not force you to guesstimate or run several compression tests.

Also, AFAIK, you can’t use more than one compression method in each archive.

I second rjamorim's opinion. It's stupid actually leaving the selection of compression to the user. I scratch my head and decide I really don't want to think about it and use the default (i.e. LZMA).

So... I finally whup up a small batch file to uncompress a zip file and recompress them into 7Z and RAR. My informal result: 70% of the time, 7Z is smaller by about 5%. 30% of the time, RAR is smaller by 20%.

Queer results. Anyways, I just delete the larger file. And let Diskeeper run continually in the background to remedy the extreme fragmentation caused.

BUT... THE CLINCHER, as I said before: RAR stands head-and-shoulder above all other compressors in that RAR provides built-in error recovery. With 7-Zip, the only way I can have error recovery is to use QuickPar2. Tedium...

Call me stupid, but I've been looking everywhere and I just can't figure out how to sync the contents of an archive without rebuilding the whole thing. Can anyone clue me in on how to do this, I know it's probably something obvious...

@ bjackson128
It's much easier to accomplish if you're actually using a saved profile that you've created a shortcut to. Hint: The profiles even work via a batch file. By doing this you shouldn't ever have to re-create an archive from scratch.

All you do is first update the archive normally like this:


Then you run the saved profile again via it's shortcut, and change the Update mode to this:


A profile when executed from a batch file (.bat) would look like this inside of the batch file:
"C:\Program Files\WinRAR\WinRAR.exe" "-cpWindows Icons"

For more info on how to update your .rar archives click the small ? help button at the upper right then click the description in Update mode to have that section of WinRAR help automatically load.

thanks for the help, got it all taken care of last night without a hitch. out of curiosity, what % recovery record would you recommend?

I guess 5% to 10% should be fine for regular use.

I personally use 3% and nothing less, sometimes more. But then again I've never had a locally created and stored RAR archive go bad on me. You can always refer to the WinRAR help file, which I believe also gives a recommendation, however anything less than 3% I wouldn't recommend.

Also if you have something that is critical and only stored on your system disabling solid compression will make fixing an archive easier.

Hint: Disabling solid compression allows very large archives that you update frequently to be updated more quickly without waiting several minutes or longer.