Corrupt .rar archive in windows, how to repair?

E

evanesce

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 19, 2011
Messages
190
Hey, I have an important .rar that is corrupt that I cannot repair via .par2 etc, because it is my own doing.

I just need to get as much of the file data as possible, whether it extracts corrupt or not. My problem is, if I "keep broken files" in WinRar, it truncates the file at the exact point the corruption begins, which is only like 80mb into a 900mb file.

Is there a way to have WinRar acknowlege the file's corrupt, keep extracting to get as close to 900mb original as possible?

I believe this will require third party recovery software. So if there's any good ones out there (even non-freeware), i'll get it as long as it's reputable to work.

Please help me, it would be appreciated! Thanks!
 
chances are you're hosed.

you can try 7zip as it's more flexible (and free so it'll bug you a ton less) than WinRar but it may just plain stop at the corrupted point.

let's just say there's reasons I put par2 files along with any split archives I burn as a backup.
 
I agree, you're probably out of luck. There would have been a chance of fixing more of the file if a recovery record were included.

I'm not sure there are any reputable 3rd party repair tools which have miraculous success rates. You could always try the free ones.
 
I'm actually trying it, paypal $45, I _will_ post my experience here. Comes with money back guarantee, i'll also post my experience with that here (if necessary).
 
The recovery did NOT work any better than winrar's built in recovery option (actually worked a bit worse). I submitted a claim for a refund. I'll let you know how that goes. The live support team says it will be a few days, however I feel protected either way since I used PayPal.
 
Question: did the "free" version lead you to believe that the full version would repair your corrupt file? 'Cause I'm thinking something along those lines. (cough, scam, cough)
 
Well, sales still didn''t reply with any refund or a process leading to a refund, so I put the paypal transaction in dispute status to fuel their ambition :)

I do believe they can remotely deactivate my copy of their crap, it didn't work anyways, so just as well. I would recommend to others to stay away from that company for any type of archive repair. The winrar repair option seems to work better anyways.
 
Just escalated to a claim. This company still hasn't replied or contacted me whatsoever. I'm still feeling pretty confident I will win this dispute.
 
Use Remo Repair Software, this tool will surely help you to extract all the data from corrupted .rar archive on your Windows system..
 
I use winrar to extract cab files.... its crazy fast at decompressing the massive cabinet files dell sometimes uses.
 
Linux has some pretty powerful tools available for situations like this. Do a Google search on it. You may even be able to boot a live CD and sideload the hard drive. Then attempt to do the recovery from there...? I don't have any experience with windows-based recovery tools. I can attest that Linux has some very powerful data recovery software available. And for free. Good luck. And, please let us know how it turns out!
 
Recovery in this case doesn't have to do with Windows or Linux. Recovering compressed data from a damaged file in a specific proprietary format with little to no redundancy is simply hard. WinRAR has a built in tool, but as many people have learned it's not very good. 3rd party "recovery" software are mostly scams, and none are able to reliably recover more data than the tool built into WinRAR.

Could someone with expert knowledge in LZ compression and familiarity with the RAR file format recover more data from a file like the OP's corrupt archive? Yes, with enough time and motivation. Would it be worth it? Possibly not because the compressed data may not be valid, so the original files can't be decompressed into a usable state.
 
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