RAR is a great compression system, it is far more flexible than Zip formats, it has very fast or very high compression, and option all in between, it spans an archive to multiple files like no other compression program out there. The options are simple and easy to use, and to unarchive a multi file archive you only need to unRar the first file, the rest automatically unarchive along with the first.

For single file archiving, since switching back to the Mac, I prefer DMG's - there's a lot to like about them. But for making multi file archives, or unarchiving RAR compressed files, SimplyRAR is my program of choice. RARsoft Labs makes a great product, and the Windows GUI is really nice, but for the Mac they only make command line compression tools. That is where SimplyRAR comes in, it gives a very nice and simple yet powerful interface to RAR for the Mac. SimplyRAR also handles PAR files.

The developer of SimplyRAR has a website for his main business, but not for SimplyRAR, so I've linked to the MacUpdate page for SimplyRAR

NOTE: The Unarchiver, a nice unarchiving program for OS X that fully integrates with your system, it just runs in the background and unarchives as needed, it supports unRARing. There is a new build as of Nov 12, 2006. Grab it here.


........................................................................