At the time, the compression landscape was fragmented. The ARC format was losing steam, PKZIP was becoming popular but lacked advanced recovery features, and internet bandwidth was measured in kilobits per second. Roshal identified a critical gap: the need for and multi-volume archives . His vision was simple yet radical—an archiver that could not only compress data efficiently but also survive corruption and be split across floppy disks.
RARLAB is the official home of the archive format and its flagship Windows GUI, WinRAR . Developed by Russian engineer Eugene Roshal , the software was built on a simple premise: how to do more with less. The Format: The .RAR extension stands for R oshal Ar chive. rarlabs
RARLABS is a renowned software company specializing in data compression, encryption, and archiving solutions. With a rich history spanning over three decades, the company has established itself as a trusted name in the industry, providing cutting-edge products and services to individuals, businesses, and organizations worldwide. At the time, the compression landscape was fragmented
RARLABS’ influence extends far beyond Windows. The company released the under a proprietary-but-available license, allowing developers to integrate RAR decompression into other operating systems. Consequently, every major Linux distribution includes unrar in its repositories. macOS archivers, Android file managers, and even NAS devices (Synology, QNAP) use RARLABS’ code to open .rar files. His vision was simple yet radical—an archiver that
RAR allowed users to split a massive archive into .part1.rar , .part2.rar , etc. This was essential in the era of floppy disks (1.44 MB) and early file-hosting services with size limits. Even today, this feature remains a standard for distributing large software builds or video projects across cloud storage.
In 2013, RARLABS released , a major overhaul of the format. It ditched legacy headers, increased dictionary sizes up to 1 GB (improving compression for large files like virtual machine images), and switched to the more efficient AES-256 in GCM mode. RAR5 is not backward-compatible with older decoders, forcing the ecosystem to update.
RARLABS is famously secretive. There is no Silicon Valley campus, no press releases, no Twitter account. Eugene Roshal rarely gives interviews. The company’s website (rarlab.com) retains a design aesthetic from 1998. Updates are announced in terse changelogs.