Should I use WINRAR?

[bj nick]

I have WINRAR, but don't remember installing it.....it's obviously a backup thing, but what exactly is it? And, do I need to maintain those enormous backup files? It is holding 395 Gig's of data!!!!!! I keep getting warning message about "low disc space."

 

[ChuckE]

WinRAR is a "Windows ARchivar" format. Something akin to WinZip. It has some compression abilities more space conservative than WinZip or others with some file formats.

You can do a quick Wikipedia lookup for WinRAR.

 

[bj nick]

I looked it up but it was a little confusing. Its backups are costing 365 G's of space! That can't be efficient.

 

[ChuckE]

I sort of question your figure of 395Gs. 395 GigaBytes?!
Perhaps you mean something about 1000 times smaller, like 395 Megabytes?

Some people get their computer units a little confused, so it would not surprise me if you meant 395 MB instead. To install all of Win7 on a computer would be about 20 GB. What have you got backing up that is nearly 40 times that?

While there are a few drives around that can actually hold 395G, those sizes are just now coming into common play. And anybody who has these half Terabyte drives is usually very aware of where their space has gone. To have one file (is it one file? or is it a directory with files totalling 395G?) would take quite a while in writing, or even just reading it. By some rough seat-of-the-pants estimating it would take between 1 and 2 hours to read that size of file. So, are you sure about it being 395GB?

 

[Mohhand]

WinRAR is a program used to open .rar files! It can be very useful, because the most common type of compression is .rar Just keep it on your computer because some day you might have to use it!

 

[bj nick]

Um.......,,,,yes, I do know the difference between a megabyte and a gigabyte (but I appreciate your explanation and the spirit in which it was given.) My secondary data drive is 500 G's. (I also have another external backup drive I just got which is 2TB.) I selected all the winRAR files marked "backup," and they totaled 365 G's. Which is staggering, I know. That was why I asked the question: why on earth would I need that kind of space tied up in (supposedly zipped) backup?

WinRAR is something new to me, I don't know why it's there, and I don't know if I need it. I am totally backed four ways to Sunday......on two external drives, online with Mozybackup, RAID, etc, etc. I don't think I need anything else, certainly not a program that ties up hundreds of Gigabytes.

I'm inclined to shut off its backup at the very least.....

 

[ChuckE]

WinRAR was a commercial archival program, I thought it had to be purchased. It is not incorporated in Windows, so if you have it on your PC then you, or someone, has installed it. See if it is in your Control Panel Programs.

If you removed the WinRAR program, or disable it, it should not impact your computer. And if you do then an error might popup reporting some action could not complete because it can't find the WinRAR program. Seeing that error message may give you a clue as to what is using WinRAR.

Knowing that, then you could then decide if you want to keep those rather extensive RAR files around.

It is my guess that you do not need it.

Another point, sometimes some scripts, for creating some backups, might be written with a slight error which includes the previous backups in with the more recent backups. Doing that doubles, then triples, then quadruples, etc. the size of the new backup file. Perhaps you have something like that happening on your PC. Just a thought.