gHacks technology news » packer http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:56:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Extract archives from multiple folders at once http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/23/extract-archives-from-multiple-folders-at-once/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/23/extract-archives-from-multiple-folders-at-once/#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:51:05 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/23/extract-archives-from-multiple-folders-at-once/ I received some very nice responses in my last Ask The Readers article that was asking the readers for a way to extract archives – including multi part ones – that would reside in different folders in one go. The archiver that I was using was able to handle all archives in one directory but not in multiple directories.

Extract Now was mentioned in the comments. I did write about it earlier actually but forgot completely that it would have that feature. As the name suggests its main purpose is to extract archives and since I do not pack files regularly I decided to make this my main application to handle archives. Extract Now supports many major file types such as zip, rar, 7z, iso and img, all in all 17 file types are supported.

Two ways are provided to communicate with the program. The main interface supports drag and drop which is probably one of the coolest features in an archiver that I have seen for a long time. Just drop a folder into the interface and Extract Now will scan it plus all subfolders for supported file types. The files will then be added and can be extracted automatically.

extract now

Several options can be configured that customize the output like retaining the archive folder structure or to extract archives into their own name folder.

Extract Now can also be added to the right-click context menu to extract files this way. This comes in handy if you want to extract just one file and not multiple ones. I have to admit that I’m so impressed by Extract Now that I made the switch from IZarc to it.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/23/extract-archives-from-multiple-folders-at-once/feed/ 0 Ask the Readers: Software to extract archives in multiple folders http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/22/ask-the-readers-software-to-extract-archives-in-multiple-folders/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/22/ask-the-readers-software-to-extract-archives-in-multiple-folders/#comments Sat, 22 Mar 2008 10:24:43 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/22/ask-the-readers-software-to-extract-archives-in-multiple-folders/ Here is the problem that I’m currently facing. I sometimes download files from the Internet that are packed and placed into different folders of the same hard drive. I normally unpack them in each folder separately which takes quite a bit of manual work depending on the amount of folders with files that can be unpacked.

I was not able to come up with an application that would recursively scan all folders and subfolders that I point it to and unpack all files found inside those folders. It should be able to handle the most common formats like zip and rar and have no problems with multi-volumes.

What could work – was to lazy to figure that out yet – would be to create a batch script that would process the folders one by one. My question however is if there is an application that is capable of extracting archives in different folders in one go. If you know of an application or have another tip let me know please.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/22/ask-the-readers-software-to-extract-archives-in-multiple-folders/feed/ 13 PeaZip an alternative to IZarc ? http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/30/peazip-an-alternative-to-izarc/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/30/peazip-an-alternative-to-izarc/#comments Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:28:41 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/30/peazip-an-alternative-to-izarc/ PeaZip is a Open Source packer that supports many formats, much like any other packer out there. The most command formats like zip, rar, ace, 7z are handled but also many lesser used ones like bz2, upx and cab. The user is asked during installation which context menu items he wants to add which is very user friendly. Most packers simply add their entries to the context menu even if the user would never use some of the options.

Once integrated users can right-click files and unpack them and create files as well using the main program interface. The user can choose between three options on how the progress is displayed for him. Two are graphical representations while one uses the command line. File checks can be performed as well displaying checksums / hash information of various algorithms which is great for verification purposes.

Peazip does have one problem though which makes it unusable for me. Peazip extracts selected archives at once. This means that if I select two archives they are unpacked at the same time which in turn means that the unpacking processes takes longer than in tools that unpack files after each other.

peazip

A quick benchmark with two rar archives had the result that PeaZip needed about twice as much time as IZarc to unpack those archives. Peazip was a little bit faster though when only one rar archive was unpacked.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/30/peazip-an-alternative-to-izarc/feed/ 3 How to extract multiple independent rar files http://www.ghacks.net/2007/07/28/how-to-extract-multiple-independent-rar-files/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/07/28/how-to-extract-multiple-independent-rar-files/#comments Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:03:04 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/07/28/how-to-extract-multiple-independent-rar-files/ Extracting multiple independent rar files did take some time in the past until I found out how to do this with just a few clicks of the mouse. The rar files should be in the same directory for this method. Just mark all rar files, right-click the marked area and select to uninstall all files in this location.

The name of the command is different depending on the application that you use to unrar files normally. My packer IZArc has its own entry in the right-click menu and I can select Extract Here from the personal menu to extract all rar files that I have selected.

It took a while until I stumbled upon this method. Before that I really extracted every rar file on its own which takes a while if you have dozens of independent rar files on your computer. I thought I share this method even though I might be the last person on earth that found it.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/07/28/how-to-extract-multiple-independent-rar-files/feed/ 3 Freeware Packer Muzip http://www.ghacks.net/2006/02/08/freeware-packer-muzip/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/02/08/freeware-packer-muzip/#comments Wed, 08 Feb 2006 07:02:51 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=314 Muzip is a freware packer that supports formats like zip, gzip and tar. It´s only 460K in size and offers an explorer like interface. It also offers the possibility to backup files on your harddrive and even schedule them using the windows scheduler.]]> Muzip is a freware packer that supports formats like zip, gzip and tar. It´s only 460K in size and offers an explorer like interface. It also offers the possibility to backup files on your harddrive and even schedule them using the windows scheduler.

A unique feature is the manual rebuild functionality which lets you make all the changes you need to do to an archive before the archive itself is rebuild. If you are looking for a winzip alternative try muzip.

[tags]packer, unzip, winzip, muzip, winrar, compression, compress, backup[/tags]

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2006/02/08/freeware-packer-muzip/feed/ 3 Freeware 7-Zip Packer http://www.ghacks.net/2005/11/20/freeware-7-zip-packer/ http://www.ghacks.net/2005/11/20/freeware-7-zip-packer/#comments Sun, 20 Nov 2005 09:26:00 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=157 If you are looking for an alternative to the windows xp build in unpacker you might want to take a look at 7-Zip. I was always looking for an unpacker besides the big two Winrar and Winzip who are both not free, after some researching I found 7-Zip which handles the most used file formats like zip and rar without problems.

Head over to 7-zip.org do download this excellent freeware.

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