Could you enlighten me guys why the rar archives are so "complicated"? Why are there rar parts in a rar file? Why are original files not just compressed in one file (if they are small)? Recent New Year wave of releases in sister site have rar archives with small (9MB) rar files inside? What's the point of it?
I think if its just .rar, the contents can be read, for example the hosting site could scan for keywords. Putting it inside another rar obfuscates it. Recently Windows defender has been complaining about the contents of rars too. Would be really annoying to find that you have to redownload the file you just spent hours downloading because windows decided to get rid of one part of it.
This is the exact reason why. File hosters will scan contents of archives to limit DCMA requests against them, and to check for malware. Fortunately for us, they only seem to scan one level deep. Why? You could bring down a file hoster using recursion in archive files which would cause a denial of service.
This is 'mostly' for sample-pack releases (and it's insane...) : The above replies are spot on! But, it also helps with manually unraring. For instance, if I download a multiple part rar, and inside of it are folders within folders, then I can double click any of the rar part files and it will show me the rar file inside. Then, I double lick THAT rar file, click into the root folder, then another folder, then I can select all files and drag them out of the rar GUI into my parent release folder. Now, take the same multi-part rar file (but, this time, there are only single files and folders inside) and I double click any of the rar-parts, it 75% of the time WILL not show you ALL of the files and folders that are in the rar. So, I think that I'm seeing 100% of the contents, select all files, drag them out to un-rar them into my releases parent folder - now I'm left with partial contents of the release, and just f***ed up. It's all about unraring the entire contents with accuracy and speed - and not having to cut the contents 2, 3, 4 folders deep, just to paste those contents back into the parent directory. If you want to right click any rar-part and click "EXTRACT HERE", that's fine. But, you'll have to then double- click into 3-4 folders, cut the contents, and then go back 3-4 folders, and paste. That's my workflow!
Or you use the free JDownloader and let it do all the work. You can even decide if the rars are automatically deleted after unpacking or not (to keep a backup).
there are rules about scene releases so that distribution and the processing of files can be standardized. there is a max file size allowed. often when you see rars inside another rar, the inner ones are the original files from the scene release (so that you can mix and match sources and couriers can upload different bits simultaneously)
Developers are usually packing more simple, user friendly archives for end user distribution. But unfortunately, "I just can't be bothered" mindset comes with the (software) price tag...
Very well said. But I prefer it, when I don't have to prepare 1000 pastries by hand while there's a way to automate the preparation a bit. You can configure JDownloader2 so it downloads the archives, unpacks them, then unpacks the extracted rar's and if there's another layer of archives, also unpacks them. After that it deletes the rar archives and optionally shuts down the system. That way you can download large ammounts of archives over night and the next day everything is ready to use. Btw. the archives inside archives belong to the past of the scene. Back in the days it was easier to share files in parts because in the early days the only available portable storage of choice were floppy disks with just a few MB of space and later rewritable CD's or USB drives with 16-32MB (yes, Megabyte). As you can see in this NFO from 1992, the release had 6 parts á 1,44MB and the parts were called "Disks". Typical Floppy Disks had exactly that ammount of storage and that was the way we shared data - we didn't download, we shared floppy's, copied the data to our machine, copied other releases to the disk and gave it back. The best way to share were LAN Partys. Everyone was connected to each other and then the sharing started. A lot of times the sharing part was more interesting than playing Games (what a LAN party officially was intended for). Another aspect were the later emerging bad and unstable internet connections (3-7KB/s downstream at max) so when a file got corrupted, the user didn't have to download the whole thing again. I remember my cousin was downloading Windows XP (400-500MB), it took him 40 hours to download and he stood awake these 40 hours so he could keep control over the connection. Ye and until now that behaviour persists - only the uploaders/distributors repack the archives into larger archives for better access of larger ammounts of data. Last edited: Jan 14, 2021
In the past 80's to 90's was size related However Audioz needs to come out and start going after the uploaders with the filenames clearly exposed to any parsing read on the file host server. Just short form the names, with everything going ( and whats about to come) people need to stop using the full file names on the uploads it's that simple, no excuses, this is why I stay away from those uploads and only try the shornamed ones ( thanks to those who do that) Example to secure the files : 1. Rar a folder ( already shortnamed!!) 2. Rename the new rar archive extension to jpg ( windows will see it as a blank picture) 3. Now rar that picture ( actually it is still a folder) If any network parser tries to open it, it will give up and move on....since it can't open it if you were to rename that second rared folder to example : pt12.txt if a Parser opened it would attempt to open it as a text file which we do not want as some info will be seen!! Back in 2001 when all the operations were going on against file sharing renaming extensions was a bullet proof way to stoping the parsers reading the files. The highest level I set a file was to 20 rar,jpeg, uharc,dat extensions which you had to send the instructions to the person so they knew the right steps to rename the extensions as each step required not just renaming extension but also need a different extractor lol lmao!! Winrar, Winace and Uharc lol The person on the other side took 10 minutes to open the file ( 750 meg file The Matrix) lolz
that "rar in rar" (or even more) started around 2004 - that was the time when UMTS technology for mobiles was introduced in europe. UMTS connections used deep package inspection by default. i personally find .dmg far more annoying. my personal collection is all in "manual install" format, least hierarchy possible, then .zip in a folder per vendor.*) so i spend a lot of time extracing, renaming and sorting, but i think its fun. legit licenses go extra. freeware sometimes extra, sometimes together with packages. mac & pc ist strictly split from each other. unless impossible, then it goes into mac.^^ *) but you are supposed not to share files like that over the net (at least not without using an adequate protocol) plus what @stopped said; size limits, interchangability, if one is faulty you dont need to redo all, stuff like that. Last edited: Jan 14, 2021
https://scenerules.org/t.html?id=2010.1_0DAY.nfo Yes, this is how scene handles things. When it trickles down to public/p2p sites they (apart from the other reasons given here) they often get collated to a bigger rar for convenience. These can also be split since most file sharing websites (your rapidgators, uploadeds and such) have an upper limit, usually around half a gig.
Not at all. Even an audio fx plugin of under 100 MB will come in the same way, for the same reasons as above.
I released a documentary film in sister website recently. I have just compressed mkv file in rar parts and uploaded to RG and UL. So it wasn’t right way, was it? Should I have compressed twice, once as one file and then in parts? Is that right?
As said above Jdownloader does great in multi-extracting in one pass but does it exists an app that achieves the same thing but not as a download job post-process?
Basically, its "Scene" releases that have "RARs inside RARs" as its in the rules and has been followed for a long time. This is how it follows. 1. The RAR you downloaded from a hoster (UL, RG, Rockfile etc.) 2. Inside that RAR is the files for that specific release along with an SFV and an NFO giving info about the release 3. After you extract the release RARs you'll get your compressed file you downloaded.
thats not the reasons. actual smaller files for FTP transfer - the way how files are/were distributed to the scene. in the past it was zip and rar inside - that was the original way for example AiR, BEAT released were packed, its just scene rules. R2R simplified this to rar volumes, because it was annoying to unpack zip and then rar files. Ohh i remember the rar files should have all a NFO file with it, to see where a part of a release belongs to, thats why we had rar inside zip. And that came all from the fact, it was FTP only before, so navigating through folders and can only read ASCII files, NFO and diz files, which were included. this should explain a few questions ...
