Without a doubt that ZIP compression is the most well known archive format until today even though there are other compression format such as 7z and KGB that gives better compression. When I was using Windows 95, the compression format that most people use was ZIP. Since it’s so popular, Windows XP started to support opening and extracting ZIP files without even the need to install WinZIP. However, RAR compression is picking up and it’s quite popular too because it can compress 8 to 30 percent better than ZIP!
Since RAR can compress better than ZIP, why people still use ZIP? For me, I still prefer to use ZIP file extension because majority of PC end user still uses zip file extension. And also most importantly Windows XP and above can open it. Sometimes I have files in RAR compression and if I want to send it to someone, I’d have to unrar it and then zip it.
Fortunately I no longer need to do that again because I can easily convert the RAR archive into ZIP. It can also support many other types of compression types.
ArcConvert is a free and easy to use tool which converts archives into different compression formats.
ArcConvert can convert the following archives: 7-ZIP /LZH /CAB /ZIP /ARJ /ACE /RAR /TAR /TGZ /GZ /Z /BZ2 /YZ1 /YZ2 /GCA /BEL /RPM /DEB/ BH/ Noa32 /HKI /PAQAR /SQX /HA /ZOO /UHARC /LFB /ZLIB /UCL /IMP /RS /SPL /APK /Arc /DZ /MSI /ALZ /PMA /PAQ7 /CHM /UDA /PAQ8 /Cryptonite /ISO /LZOP /BMA
To the following ones: ZIP, 7-ZIP, CAB, LHA, TAR, TGZ, BZ2, YZ1, BGA, RAR, ACE, NOA32, HKI, PAQAR, UHARC, YZ2, DZ, HA
ArcConvert is very easy to use. Just download, extract and run arc_convert.exe. Click the Open Archiv button to locate the archive file that you want to convert. Select the NEW archive extension that you want to convert and click Convert button. There’s also a Check button for you to check your archive file. Sometimes you’ll get “Archive ERROR” message but it can still be converted. There seems to be problem in converting ZIP to other extension. But I tried RAR to ZIP, and also 7-ZIP to ZIP, it works. I have contacted the author and he claims that there is no problem. What about you? Are you able to convert RAR to ZIP?