How to Repair Corrupted Zip, RAR, TAR, Tar.gz, 7z in Windows

Written By phillcalls
Updated on June 10th, 2023

We all deal with file transfers in our daily lives. If you are a mobile user, then you must be using Bluetooth for transferring your files, or these days WiFi direct is in order. Whereas if you are a daily computer user apart from mobiles, you must be sending files through emails, Network file transfer (If you are on a local network), online public or private sharing through services like Dropbox, Zoho Docs, One drive by Microsoft, and many more. A smaller size is easy to share but when it comes to large or multiple file transfers, we need to compress the files and create a single package. Zip compression is the most common technique used by computer users, followed by Rar, Tar, Tar.gz, and 7z.

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With the flexibility of compressing large and multiple files in a single archive file, These techniques sometimes become a curse for the users. Such files are prone to be affected by viruses the most. If even there is any error during a file transfer (locally or over WEB), the archive files get corrupted before your eyes blink. Before we talk about how to repair archive files, or a particular Zip, Rar, TAR, or 7z file, let us know what exactly these extensions are.

Applications to create an Archive file

Zip File: It is a file that is compressed or zipped using Zip compression, it is the most common type of compression in which every single file in the archive folder is compressed separately.

A Window user can easily create a ZIP archive by right-clicking on a file and selecting “Send to → Compressed (zipped) Folder. The same method is followed by ” Mac OS X users, they can create ZIP files by right-clicking a file and selecting “Compress [filename].”

7z File: It is a compressed archive file that is created with Igor Pavlov’s 7-Zip file compression utility. It uses an open-source LZMA compression, which has a comparatively high compression ratio and it can include strong AES-256 (256-bit) encryption. Also supports file sizes up to 16,000,000,000 GB.

By default, 7z compression uses the LZMA method. 7z format also supports the PPMD, BCJ, BCJ2, BZip2, and Deflate compression methods.

RAR file: RAR file is basically a WinRAR Compressed Archive file that contains more than one file in it. It provides a higher compression ratio which is more than typical ZIP compression. It incorporates a proprietary compression algorithm which is now adopted by other compressors like .7z as well.

It also gives you the ability to compress and split the file into multiple parts. It makes it more secure as the RAR file needs all the parts in the same folder to be extracted.

TAR file: It is an archive created by tar which is a Unix-based utility used to compress and package files together. It contains multiple files which are stored in an uncompressed format. These formats are mostly compressed into a.GZ file using GNU Zip compression.

A file name with the “.tar.gz” multiple extension is a TAR archive that is compressed using GNU Zip compression. You can easily identify these files by looking at the .Tgz extension.

How to Repair Corrupt Archive Files (Zip, RAR, TAR (.gz), 7z)

If any of your archive files are corrupted due to issues like a virus attack, or failure during file transfer, you get several messages like: “Can’t extract the file”, “No files to Extract”, “Unexpected end of RAR archive”, “Cannot open a zip file”, “Error 0x800004005: Unspecified error” invalid argument message while extracting a TAR file in Linux, Non-7-zip archive and many more.

You can use the advanced RAR repair feature by WinRAR to repair RAR files, 7z or Zip. Currently, WinRAR doesn’t give any option to repair TAR (.gz) files.

How to use Advanced RAR Repair

Open your WinRAR application
Locate your RAR, ZIP, or 7z file
Select the file and click on “Tools” or “ALT + S“
Click on the Repair Archive tab
Click on the Radio Button followed by “Treat the Corrupt Archive as Zip“
The Repair process will start. Click done when it’s completed.

This feature is not supported for TAR or T.gz files. Also if the archive file is corrupted severely, this internal RAR repair tool cannot fix those errors.

All-in-One RAR Repair Tool

In cases, as I mentioned above, you might need a third-party tool that can repair ZIP, RAR, TAR and TAR.gz, and & 7-zip files. But repairing RAR files with third-party tools can often harm your files. I can suggest you an Archive Recovery Tool to extract data from your archive files. The tool by SysInfoTools extracts decompresses the files and provides all the compressed files intact. This means even if you created a TAR file in a Unix-based OS, you can retrieve and recover data in windows OS using a tool.

If you are just facing an issue with your Zip file, you can repair it by using ZIP Repair Tool. Both these tools are paid and commercial wares, therefore I suggest you try an evaluation version (Demo Version) before buying.