Archive name and parameters dialog: general options
The dialog contains the following items:
Enter the name manually or press the "Browse" button to browse for the archive name. You may enter a name containing a disk letter or the full path to the archive.
Opens the menu allowing to create new, organize and select compression profiles. Compression profiles allow you to quickly restore previously saved compression options or to specify default options for this dialog. WinRAR provides a few predefined profiles optimized for creating e-mail attachments, backup files and other operations. Name of currently active profile is displayed above "Profiles..." button. Please see the topic Compression profiles for more information.
Select format of newly created archive. You can specify RAR to use the latest RAR 5.0 format, RAR4 for format compatible with WinRAR 4.x or ZIP to create ZIP archive. Depending on the archive format selected, some advanced options not supported by target format will be disabled. If you update an existing archive, this option is ignored and WinRAR uses the format of updating archive.
Choose between "Store", "Fastest", "Fast", "Normal", "Good" and "Best" methods. "Store" writes files to archive at maximum speed and without compression. All following methods compress data, providing a higher compression ratio and lower speed when going from "Fastest" to "Best".
This is a size of memory area used to find and compress repeated patterns in processing data. Larger compression dictionary sometimes allows to improve the compression ratio of big files, especially when creating a solid archive. But larger dictionary also decreases the compression speed and increases memory requirements.
Maximum dictionary size for RAR 4.x archives is 4 MB. RAR 5.0 format allows to create archives with up to 1 GB dictionary in 64 bit WinRAR version and up to 256 MB in 32 bit WinRAR (up to 128 MB in Windows XP x86). Decompression needs less memory than compression, so both 32 and 64 bit WinRAR can decompress archives with all dictionary sizes including 1 GB provided that computer has more than 1 GB of available memory. ZIP format dictionary size is fixed to 32 KB.
If size of all source files for solid archive or size of largest source file for non-solid archive is at least twice less than dictionary size, WinRAR can reduce the dictionary size. It helps to lower memory usage without decreasing compression.
If you wish to create volumes, enter a size of single volume here. You can choose size units in the drop down list to the right of size field. In this list "B" means bytes, "KB" - kilobytes, "MB" - megabytes and "GB" - gigabytes.
It is allowed to enter decimal fractions using the decimal symbol defined in Windows regional settings.
Also it is possible to select units by appending one or two characters to volume size string. Lowercase 'k' means kilobytes, uppercase 'K' - thousands of bytes, 'm' - megabytes, 'M' - millions of bytes, 'g' - gigabytes, 'G' - billions (milliards) of bytes. "KB", "MB" and "GB" always mean kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes regardless of character case.
Volume size input field has the associated drop down list containing previously entered, predefined and defined by user values. You can use this list to quickly select any of items it contains. This list can be customized with Define volume sizes dialog. To activate it press "Define volume sizes…" button in Compression settings dialog.
If you are archiving to removable disks and using RAR format, you may select "Autodetect" from the list and WinRAR will choose the volume size automatically for each new volume.
Remove successfully archived source files.
Creates a self-extracting archive (exe file), which can be unpacked without using any other programs. You may select the type of SFX module and set a few other SFX parameters like a destination folder in the Advanced options of this dialog.
Creates a solid archive. Usually gives higher compression ratios, but applies some restrictions. Read the description of solid archives for more details.
Adds the recovery record, which may help to restore an archive in case of damage. You can specify the recovery record size in Advanced options of this dialog. Default value is 3% of total archive size.
Test files after archiving. This option is especially useful if "Delete files after archiving" is also enabled. In this case files will be deleted only if the archive had been successfully tested.
>WinRAR cannot modify locked archives, so locking important archives prevents their accidental modification by WinRAR. This option is not intended or able to prevent modification by other tools or willful third party. It implements a safety measure only for accidental data change by WinRAR.
Set a password to encrypt archived files. It is valid only during a single archiving operation and overrides the default password entered in File menu. If the default password is present, it will be restored after the archiving operation is completed. If the default password was absent before starting archiving, it also will be absent after finishing the operation.