WinRAR supports the following features:

Complete support for RAR and ZIP archives, and unpacking of ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ, ACE, UUE, BZ2, JAR, ISO, 7z and Z archives. Future versions of WinRAR are planned to include 7z creation.[1]

The ability to create self-extracting and multi-volume (split) archives.

Data redundancy is provided via recovery records and recovery volumes, even allowing reconstruction of damaged archives.

Support for advanced NTFS file system options and Unicode in file names.

Optional archive encryption using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with a 128-bit key.

Version history

A comprehensive list of version information can be found here. Below is a summary of version information.

Since version 2.9, the new RAR3 archive format is implemented. The new compressed archives cannot be managed by old versions of WinRAR.

Since version 3.50 beta 1, WinRAR adds support for interface skins and themes.

Since version 3.50, WinRAR supports Windows XP x64.

Since version 3.60 beta 1, WinRAR includes a multithreaded version of the compression algorithm, which improves compression speed on systems with multiple, dual-core or hyperthreading-enabled CPUs.

Since version 3.70 beta, WinRAR features support for Windows Vista. [2]

Version 3.70 (May 30, 2007)

Version 3.71 (September 24, 2007) - bug fix