I've been using WinRAR for as long as I can remember, because when I checked up on it at the time it was the best tool available as far as compression was concerned. Is this still the case? Is there now an alternative that can squash files into even smaller states than .rar files can? I'm personally not bothered about loads of features in these types of programs, all I want to do is make files as small as possible. Any suggestions, or should I just stick with WinRAR for now?

Thanks for your time and opinions

Rar is nice, but my favorite is bzip2. I use it in UNIX/Linux, and it's great when combined with tar archives. It's kind of like gzip-- it only works with one file at a time, which is why you'd put all the files you'd want in a tar archive, and then use bzip on it.

I am a fan of StuffIt by Aladdin Systems.

You've not mentioned which Windows version, but for Windows XP I use the OS itself for Zip files, and WinRAR for all other archive types. Works for me, and it's a pretty clean way to deal with things.

Moved to the 'Windows Software' section, by the way.

For best compression rates use WinUHA, free software, dld from www.winuha.com ; beats zip, rar, etc. But it's going a little slower than the rest.

Thanks a lot guys, I'll try all of this stuff and see which I prefer

Sorry for puting this in the wrong forum lol That's not like me at all!

Thanks a lot

Magic ISO........ITs good and easy

well i don't know the best but i use WinZip 9.0 and it works find with me. it makes zip files and unzipes them. it does the job. just go to download.com and look for programs like that.

I've seen some software cracking groups (*cough* MYTH *cough*) that use eHarc. It seems to work well. Personally, though, I use winRAR. It's fast and easy to use, although it doesn't shave much space off the size of the original file(s). If you need to make small compressions for putting a large file or large files onto a disk, winRAR can break up the selected files into small compressions like .r00 files. Then you can just extract all of these at the same time and it will put the pieces back together into what was originally archived. This is good for sharing stuff that is too big for a floppy disk, but too small to waste a CD on. Just compress it, save it to multiple floppies, then move 'em and unzip to the desired location.

Oh yeah, there is another file compresser that can make small .7z files, but I forget what it is called.

7zip Also, free. Dld at www.7-zip.org