RAR or Roshal Archive files named after Eugene Roshal, the RAR compression algorithm developer, are the innate format of WinRAR archive and can be opened on almost all the computer platforms. The RAR files are data containers, they store one or more files in the compressed form. RAR includes a proprietary compression algorithm that is now used by other compressors like 7zip. RAR compression has a much higher compression ratio as compared to ZIP compression which makes RAR files more preferable. RAR compressors are also known for the creation of multi-volume archives split over several compressed files and can be transferred to multiple disks. These split file archives use the file extension R followed by the digit that corresponds the part of the split archive for instance “R00” to “R99” or may have the standard .RAR extension. RAR files are required to be unpacked before they can actually be used. WinRAR provides the complete support for creating and unpacking RAR files. To unpack RAR files, place all of them in a single folder and start extracting. To open a RAR file, double click on RAR file icon to open it in WinRAR, select the files, press "Extract To" button, enter a destination path and press "OK". RAR archives can be also password protected.