FreeArc Reviews

nice software

I just like that project.

It is a great archiver especially for the price when you need to archive a truly large amount of data. For example, if you have lots of files like a several GB software development project. Another good example, is you need to backup a 30-50 GB of virtual machine data files. In large data cases I usually have lots of time and I want to get the best compression ration. FreeARC produces that best compression ratio and that's what I value it for. UI is a bit confusing, but I can not complain for the price. In general UI follows WinRAR design pattern only a bit plainer. On the modern hardware ultimate compression ratio is easy to accomplish, because of abundance of RAM and CPU power. I don't think this application utilizes multiple cores (see beta app note below). There is NO money to be made in archive applications, so this one is still quite good for the money. I doubt you get much support as the author is likely is busy with life and making money in some other ways. All in all it is a great application if you are looking for a way to get the best compression for large amount of data and you don't care how long it takes. That's what I use this app for. WinRAR for mainstream scenarios. On smaller (less than 1 GB data sets) the Ultimate compression does not provide as much benefit when compared to other apps. Beta Note: There is a forum for archive software developers and there you can find that author has made a successor to this version. The successor has even better compression ratios, better compression speed and it uses multiple cores. You cannot get that version from sourceforge and it is still an early beta.

即使是aes+twofish也不行， Hope you can add threefish1024

This may seem outdated, but you should take another look. For absolute compression size vs speed, this remains the best option. We are migrating a very large amount of data across the 'net to an Amazon cloud setup. When it came time to migrate large files, we tested 7z, WinRar, ZHuff, and FreeArc, because we needed command line versions of the applications. When running at comparable compression speeds (in KBpS compressed), FreeArc was significantly better than any of the other options, and when run at maximum compression, blew away all of the other tested compressors at their maximums in terms of size vs time. It is old, and minimalist, and has some issues that need to be fixed (i.e. clicking the 'Background' button on the GUI does not reduce the process priority on Windows - it just hides the interface). But for file compression in a reasonable time, it is well worth it.

Simply can't fault it. It hasn't been updated since 2010 and it's still better than WinRAR. If only it was updated again.

FreeArc is an outstanding archiver. To understand just how much it leaves the competition behind, go to the maximumcompression site and sort by "efficiency". FreeArc's only real problem is that it treats files under Windows as case-sensitive, which leads to duplicates when synchronising two machines, where one uses (for example) C:\Temp, the other C:\temp.

Outdated and lacks a lot of features, also the newly released RAR5 codec from WinRar is better then FreeArc in almost every area. Interface has this clumsy GUI, very inconvenient to use. Not recommended.

User interface based on GTK, which means it is unresponsive and ugly, especially under Windows classic theme. Much larger, *bloated* binaries than competing products. The GUI does not clearly expose all possible compression options. I did not find a way, through the GUI, to set a reasonable dictionary size between very extreme values. It is easy to create archives that require too much memory even when this is not warranted because the data set does not contain too much similarity. The unpopular format, with a generic name "arc", which has nothing in common with older DOS-era compressors of the same name, means that archives created with this tool may be difficult to extract on obsolete OS, by other people, or in the future. Compact self-extractor modules are provided to avert this issue. It is probably safer to make all archives as EXE files for now. Large installers produced in Russia are sometimes in this "arc" format. FreeArc might prove useful in extracting them, should they fail to unpack themselves. One such download was the reason I found this tool. I have got an impression that this "arc" is a rather "loose" standard, similar to what ZIP has become. It is possible to install a number of "preprocessors" in FreeArc for recompressing different already compressed data formats. They may or may not be present in another installation of FreeArc, and what seems like a perfectly solid archive may suddenly fail to extract. This archiver's basic advantage over better known formats like RAR, ZIP or ACE is its support for extremely large dictionaries (with corresponding memory consumption). But it has come too late. 7-Zip and now also WinRAR (less effectively) already provide them.

I'm not impressed with FreeArc. I have tried on some computers and I noticed that there is no support of hyper-threading and no possibility of multiple CPU's. The speed isn't very improved as the latest versions of RAR and 7zip. The GUI of this program looks well, but some features cannot be saved as desired for default settings. Binary files are the most times bit bigger after compression, in size than RAR and 7zip.

Awesome compressor. I'd love to see the day in which srep gets included in the main branch. This way we will be able to make self extracting archives without the need to send the srep.ext binary.

This program does some incredible compression with its .arc archive format ! It beats 7-zip in resulting archive size in some cases ! For example : 615mb registry image .reg file -> 7z( Ultra LZMA2 ) = resulting archive size 17.6 mb in ~2 minutes -> freearc ( Ultra + "protection: Add (autosize, 1-4%): " ) = resulting archive size 15.5 mb (14.9mb without recovery data ) in ~3 minutes Too bad there aren't any updated versions since 2010.. And also, its such a shame that the documentation for customizing the compression is offline though.. But the presets do an ok job.

Good job. Pleasantly surprised.

It looks like that the installer is infected! Check it out: http://www.virustotal.com/file-scan/report.html?id=6539dcec7fc5f5a62e0b44dd6f796a7ef7a09c16ec43d100ac2e6ffc74a8faba-1314458962

Very promising archiver, with powerful and efficient compression and impressive set of useful features.

Kaspersky found Trojan within file. Sounded like a great program too!!!