.zip or .rar

[MitaDC]

Hey I need to compress a file from like 782mb to 702mb for a cd. If I can't then oh well but I still would like to know. What is better between winrar and winzip?? What are the +'s and -'s of them?? Does .rar or .zip compress to a smaller size?? TY

[originel]

.rar compresses to a MUCH smaller size and is IMHO better than zip files in every form and fashion...except that windows can't natively read htem (which isn't a - IMO anyways cause i hate windows compression).

[jkrohn]

I believe that rar offers better compression.

If not, I believe that ace offers the best compression of them all, though at a slower compression/decompression.

Check out this compression comparison test here.

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx...&var1=4&var2=0

It appears that WinRAR @ 33.4% WinACE at 32% both beat winzip @ 19.6% handily.

Jkrohn

[MitaDC]

yah u have to download winrar which I have. ok ty for the help

[ben-the-slacker]

I support rar.
http://www.rarsoft.com

[J-Excel]

7zip might do it if rar doesn't. 7zip beats rar and zip for compression ratio.

[davidamarkley]

RAR is the best between the .RAR and .ZIP formats... There may be better compressions available using other software, but for general use, and for quicker compression/decompression, RAR fits the bill nicely. Not to mention that it has several advantages that WinZIP and the like can't offer...

David

[shahani]

What kind of file is it you want to compress? If its already in compressed format like mp3 or jpg, neither rar nor zip will compress it to the size you want.

Overall, both are good and offer nearly equal compression. Winzip is faster though.

[nukes]

I normally use bz2 for big files. More out of habit than anything else. It did a 1573mb file to 1271mb on default settings. That was like 80% of the original size. For you that would take the file to 631mb. But sums like that aren't to be trusted as the compression isn't exactly linear.
RAR would do it better out of those two. I think WinRAR only has like a 30-day eval time (same as winzip, but winrar stops working afterwards) but the command line tools are fine.

[tchang]

personaly i prefer rar