RAR 5.0 archive format


WinRAR 5.0 introduces a new verson of RAR archive format.

New features of RAR 5.0 format include:


Some obsolete or inefficient RAR 4.x features are not included in RAR 5.0 format:


Older applications including WinRAR versions earlier than 5.0 are not able to recognize RAR 5.0 archives. So if you wish to be sure that archive can be decompressed by older software, you may prefer to select RAR 4.x archiving format. It can be done either in Archive name and parameters dialog or with -ma command line switch. Also RAR 4.x may be preferable if you need special text or multimedia compression algorithms or old style volume naming scheme.