Free RAR Extractor List
What’s with all the people asking how to open RAR files? Sure, RAR is a very good archiver offering nice file compression ratio; it’s actually the archiver I use and there are probably several .rar files to be found even on this site. But the real popularity of .rar files probably comes from BitTorrent. Many torrents are compressed with WinRar, so you get people asking for a RAR extractor.
It might seem like an obvious solution to just download the original WinRar software, but RAR is shareware and not everyone can endure the nag-screens or buy the full version. So today I’ll tell you how to open RAR files using only free software – no matter what your operating system is.
RAR Extractor For Windows
My freeware .rar extractor of choice is certainly 7-zip (download page). Once you install it, you can simply right-click a RAR file and choose 7-zip -> Extract here to extract it. 7-zip also handles multi-volume (“spanned”) archives – just make sure you click the first volume when telling it to extract. 7-zip is completely free – in fact, it’s open source.
RAR Extractor For Linux
There’s a good tutorial describing in detail how to install and use the unrar command on various versions of UNIX-based operating systems – Open rar file or Extract rar files under Linux or UNIX. I’ve heard there’s also a Linux version of 7-zip that you could use for opening .rar files – check their site.
… And For Mac
UnRarX is what Mac OS users can employ to open RAR files. Not only a .rar extractor, UnRarX can also restore corrupted and missing archives.
In conclusion
So there you have it – RAR extractors for every popular operating system. Feel free to send the whining BitTorrent junkies to this page if someone asks “how do i open this file!??one!?” again ;)
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kkkkk wat happens after i extract i can play the game it was in the beginning a torrent folder with rar so now can i play ??????????????????????
plz someone answer
I am downloading the dark knight (blu-ray version). Its 8gb and its split into 89 rar files. Anyway i wanna check that its all good and stuff so thought id just download the first 5 rar files. Anyway when i begin extracting it (rar file number 1) it keeps sayin packed data crc failed in the dark knight.mkv. The volume is corrupt.
Everyones comments on the torrent say its brilliant it all works fine.
Each rar file is 95.3mb. Is it doing this bacause i havent downloaded the 89 files. Also please dont tell me its anything to do with this fat32 – ntfs milarky, cos if so then thats a right pain cos i decided to use the rar version as i found out u cant really put just one 8gb file onto ur external hard drive if its not been converted to ntfs.
One final thing, i’m downloading lost series 5. it has each episode in a rar file and the whole series is about 5gb. anyway im able to download each episode individually and extract each episode individually fine so was hoping the dark knight was goin to work the same way.
Hope u understood all that haha, i appreciate ur feedback
This is completely normal; you get the error because you don’t have all the parts. You can still check the video quality or whatever if you find the partially extracted file and play it through VLC.
many thanks for ur reply, and sorry if i sound dumb how can i partially extract it. thats the problem im having anyway, its not letting me extract the file in the first place. is it just easier to wait till its all done. but i dont want to download 8gb if im not happy with it
p.s: just to say ive never downloaded a movie in rar format before, ive always just down an avi or mkv file, which was nice an easy, so forgive me if i sound like a complete novice
If you’re using 7zip, right-click the first file, then click 7-Zip -> Extract Here. You’ll get the error message again, but the program will also put the partially extracted file in the current directory. This doesn’t work if you actually open the archive in the 7-zip File Manager and then try to extract it – in that case it will automatically remove the partially extracted file without asking.
Looks like its worked now, many thanks
PERFECT .. thanks bro .. ill never think twice before downloading a rar file … cheers
hey thanks… saved me a load of headache
hello ppl, continuing the above thread eventhgh i had all the parts while extracting its saying packed data crc failed in part 6 :(….i hav downloaded 3gb for lord of the rings..ppl pls help out how to fix it….the partial xtracting is also not working
Try re-downloading just the problematic part. Most BitTorrent clients should have the option to re-download only specific files.
hi, i’m just new to this so I was wanting to know (on the 7-zip download page) which one is best to download?
I’ve got windows xp is that helps
I’ve been running 7-Zip for about 6 mths. on XP Pro. with Windows MP and VLC. File extraction and play for multi-volume RAR’s is easier than any of the other programs I’ve tried. In short: I love it!
Doesn’t fit the topic I know but my Windows Media Player is buggering me about while out of the blue when I double click a mpg the regular programme doesn’t open it. Nothing happens at all and it appears to have gone altogether?
HELP.
Hi, I have recently downloaded quite a few rar files and I have downloaded 7zip to get the videos from them. However, on every single one I try, it says there is an error and the file is broken. At first I thought that this might just be that particular file but it does that for everything that I try and they are all different files from different people. Is there something else that I could try?
Please help…
Thanks,
Laura.
It’s indeed unusual that it would report an error for a bunch of different files, but I still think it’s more likely that the files are corrupted. 7zip has always been pretty good about handling .rar files, I can’t imagine it would suddenly and arbitrarily lose that ability.
Perhaps you could try reinstalling 7zip and make sure you have the latest version. Also, you could try opening this .rar file. I just tested it with 7zip and it opened this file okay.
Thanks for providing great information regarding the topic. I’m a fan of your writing. Keep up the great work.
Hi
Question. I have downloaded a set of 15 rar files which make up garmin NT. After extracting each archive to a dir I get message ‘File Broken.’ How does one extract a set of rar files that contains split files (a bit in one file, the rest in the next archive). I am using 7zip. TIA
Normally you just need to place all the archives in a single directory and extract the first one. 7zip should detect that it’s a multi-part archive and process all parts automatically.
I have downloaded a torrent file…(complete 709 MB)…but when I try to play it in the vlc player…it wouldn’t play…it’s because its a RaR file…so what i did is I used 7zip to extract the file…but then even though its perfectly extracted it wouldn’t play….I really don’t know what to do..huhu…pls…help me…I spent 8 hours just to download the file…pls…help…^_^