RAR

File Format
Name	RAR
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Archiving RAR
Extension(s)	.rar
MIME Type(s)	application/vnd.rar, application/x-rar-compressed
PRONOM	x-fmt/264, fmt/411, fmt/613
Kaitai Struct Spec	rar.ksy
Released	1993

Roshal ARchive (RAR) is a proprietary file format used by the compression software WinRAR. They make the decompression code available for use in other programs and allow its distribution, but with a license provision that "You cannot use the unrar source to re-create the RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary."

File identification

Current versions start their files with (hex) 52 61 72 21 1A 07, followed by 00 or 01. Early versions (for which no format documentation is known) start with 52 45 7E 5E.

Software

• WinRAR website
  • Free UnRAR.dll
  • UnRAR source
• Konvertor
• 7-Zip

Sample files

• http://cd.textfiles.com/ataricompendium/FILES/MISC/PRTFOLIO/
• http://cd.textfiles.com/thebbsorg/max_files/
• https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/archive/rar/ → *.rar

Links

• Wikipedia article
• Forensics Wiki article (has lots of format details)
• Mini RAR poster