

With over a decade of writing experience in the field of technology, Chris has written for a variety of publications including The New York Times, Reader's Digest, IDG's PCWorld, Digital Trends, and MakeUseOf. Chris has personally written over 2,000 articles that have been read more than one billion times-and that's just here at How-To Geek. That's probably more formats than you'll need.Ĭhris Hoffman is the former Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. It can also extract (but not create) AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR and Z files. 7-Zip can create and extract 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, and WIM files. It works on all modern versions of Windows, from Windows XP through Windows 10.ħ-Zip supports a variety of different archive types. Instead, it's just a completely free to use, open-source application that does its job without complaints. It doesn't have a big marketing department behind it, so you won't see advertisements for 7-Zip online. We recommend the open-source 7-Zip tool instead.ħ-Zip isn't the shinest, most modern looking application. WinZip costs a minimum of $30, while WinRAR costs $29. These tools are commercial software applications that nag you to spend money rather than just doing their job and getting out of the way. They might be for you if you need every bit of critical space on the media you are storing your compressed file.WinZip and WinRAR may be household names, but we recommend against using them.

However, RAR files are only about four years younger than Zip files. With so many compression types, your safest format will be a Zip file. You can find such an extension by searching for it in the Chrome Web Store. The Chrome browser cannot open them unless installing an extension enables this ability. However, you will need it to create your own files. No, other free utilities are available, so you don’t have to purchase and install WinRAR. Other features include storing file attributes in the NTFS file system. Using RAR compression allows for slightly better compression ratios compared to Zip files. Note: 7-Zip is not able to create RAR archives.

However, if you need to create them, this would be your chosen program. Generally, there is only one other piece of software I will recommend. What other software is recommended to open them? Microsoft will add native RAR support in Windows 11 soon, so you won’t need a third-party application. There is no native support within Windows to handle them yet. Unfortunately, this type of compression isn’t free. Yes, third-party software is needed to work with them. This way, you have a copy of all the extracted files in a new folder, instead of working with the files directly in the compressed state.
