.rar files

[coronamad]

This is going to sound like the dumbest question ever, and I know this (yeah, lurk moar, etc.), but...

How exactly do .rar files work? Say I DL the .rar from someplace like rapidshare. Then what?

[Penthesilea]

http://www.rarlab.com/

uncompress using that

[Tajin]

A .RAR file is like a .ZIP file, or a .7z file, they are information compressed, all you need to extract the information, is the appropiate decompressor.

[coronamad]

Here's another question. Is there a difference between .rar and torrents? Assume (correctly, at least in this case) that I know absolutely nothing.

[Tajin]

A torrent is a "collection" of links it just tells your bittorrent program, where can it find the files or folders and how it can download them (since bittorrent slices files into smaller chunks).

A RAR file is just compressed information. The purpouse of having a torrent, is to have a network of nodes distributed, so the information can bet shared faster. The idea of a RAR is to save space.



P.S. yeah i know my torrent definition is not the best possible (or even accurate)

[coronamad]

Thanks a lot for information. It's been bugging me for a while.

[Kaylia]

In doubt, go on google and type "wikipedia + 'topic' ", you will get the answer to 99.9% of your question

[coronamad]

I did try that, but some of it was a little too technical for me.

[Charla]

Wikipedia has its own search engine you know... although it can get screwy with some characters, and it's anal about spelling.

The simplest explanation of how bittorrent works is that the .torrent file has the url of the tracker, so the client checks it and goes there. Then the tracker adds your ip to its list, and all the clients using that tracker are checking the list and trying to connect to random other users and swapping file pieces. The newer clients actually let you see which piece they're working on from which source, and which blocks they have so far.

The important part is that a .torrent file doesn't actually have any data, it just lets the client know how to start looking for it.

[Kaylia]

I know, but I often find it easier to just use google to find stuff on wikipedia. Not to mention google is integrated in the browser as well, so no need to bring wiki up >_>

[Killerme]

Does .rar compress better then .zip or something? Cause I think rar files are pretty annoying when you could just use .zip which is more universal.

[Tajin]

Yes .RAR has a better compression ratio than .ZIP, but of course if you are trying to compress Video or JPEG images, you will hardly notice a difference in both formats.

[coronamad]

Does it matter which torrent application I use to DL torrents? Like is there one that has access to more, or is faster, etc.?

[Kaylia]

Does it matter which torrent application I use to DL torrents? Like is there one that has access to more, or is faster, etc.?

Not really.

Bitcomet and Azureus are generally the most popular tho. Work pretty well

[GraveRobberX]

utorrent is always been a good choice

http://utorrent.com/

others have their own prefrences, but overall utorrent gets the job done
(some bittorrent programs are resource hogs, and slow down the pc, but overall you should try some out to see which you like)

BitTornado,BitComet,Azerus(sp),uTorrent,etc.

Edit: Also http://www.torrentz.com/ is a good place to look for torrented files, its like the google search for torrents (searches throught most torrent sites)