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Why torrent in RAR format?


Blinding

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Posted

I see quite a few torrents that are in RAR format and I wonder why people do that. I know some file transfers don't handle multiple or large files but torrent does both just fine. Compression might help with some files but video and sound files are usually already compressed about as much as you are going to get.

With RAR format I have to download everything and then extract before I can use any of the files. Worse I have to waste disk space on the RAR and the extracted files, double the usage. And there is that additional risk of corruption.

If you really think using RAR is necessary then watch out for spilled salt, black cats, and ladders. Also don't go too near the edge of the earth or you might fall off.

Posted

LOL, yeah. I hear ya. Except for eBooks and uncompressed images, there is no savings in compressing large files that are distributed. You have to remember that the bittorrent protocol is only one method for file distribution. Usenet, HTTP, and FTP are still popular methods for file distribution. Some Usenet servers set a limit on how big a "post" (e.g. file) can be.

Posted

It's prolly a good idea to start moving away from the practice... I tend to stay away from em after downloading one too many quota-churning fat files that turn out to have a damn password...

The latest nasty trick I found was some bloody ZIX file inside a RAR, along with some vile 'Winzix' thing to unzip it that wouldn't... coincidentally enough, an enthusiastic swarm of cursed IE popups happened along around the same time, and decided they liked the place and were gonna hang around.

Sif I'm not nuking that adware filth from orbit at the first opportunity, geez... My mind boggles at the notion that enough slush-brained masochistic drones exist to justify such base and despicable marketing tactics... who on Earth has a positive response to advertising by assault, I'd like to know... I wanna give em a headslap.

BTW, this isn't in the context of downloading porn, either... something still pretty popular, but not quite that high on the list

Posted

"who on Earth has a positive response to advertising by assault"

...And yet such tactics have become QUITE popular, with the same TV commercial repeating as much as 4 times an hour every hour...for days on end.

When will they ever learn...drawing attention to a product is not as important as NOT angering existing customers!

On the subject of RAR format torrent files...like the other posters have said, many such files CAME from different file-sharing networks. The torrent ends up being just a repost of the original source format, because the poster may even be too lazy to firstly check the reliability of the RAR file's contents...or because the poster doesn't want to post the RAR file's contents "in the clear". Password-required RAR files are really dirty tactics used by some private torrent sites.

Posted

The other thing is rar has better compression then .zip. Which maybe the other reason. Now 7zip i hear has better compression the rar does. But all those end in 7z. which is even more confusing for some people.

Posted

Rarity...Win XP supports .ZIP format files, it treats them like directories/folders.

.RAR format files can be read by MANY file compression utilities.

.7z format files can ONLY be read currently (to my knowledge) by 7zip...which few people have.

There's no sense in shrinking your target audience to 1/10th its potential size just to save 5% or less on total torrent size via "extreme" compression.

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