Multivolume Archives That Do Not Split Files

[therube]

Multivolume (Multi-volume) Archives That Do Not Split Files


Is Pack (& ZIP in particular) able to create multivolume archives, such that individual files within each archive are not split between volumes?

(Not that I know much about XP's built-in ZIP handling), but it appears that XP is not able to unpack a Salamander created multivolume ZIP archive. (Not sure offhand about Vista/W7.)

Problem is if I create a multivolume archive & email it to (say a Lawyer), they (using XP) are not able to open the file.

In times of old, ARJ archiver (could do all kinds of things that ZIP & RAR couldn't/can't do, but that's besides the point) could create multivolume archives, but also had the ability to not split files across the volumes. The benefit that provides is that each individual volume (of a set) can be extracted individually. (Now if a single file, compressed, was larger then the selected volume size, that would not hold true, but again, not the point.)

So what I did was ...

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ARJ32 a Ang001.ARJ -vw3100000 -y -ve *.pdf

/create multivolume archive of ~3 MB, but do not split individual files across volumes/

And then converted the .ARJ file into a .ZIP, which the REARJ program (part of ARJ) does nicely.

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REARJ *.arj /tZIP

/convert arj archives to zip format/


Is there a better way?


I looked at 7zip & RAR (GUI's which I don't use) but did not see that they are able to do anything like that.

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 The modifier "w" specifies to ARJ that files are NOT to be split
           across volumes except for one case.  That case is where the
           archived file would not fit in ONE whole volume.  This feature
           does not optimize the use of space in these type of volumes.
           With this feature, it is possible to have a volume of only 100
           or less bytes.

[daern]

Sorry, can't help you with your problem, but thanks for reminding me of ARJ. I don't think I've used it for nearly 15 years

[Ether]

I concur, my Windows XP SP3 couldn't unpack even a two-volume zip archive created by Salamander. Unfortunately, 7-zip can't create multi-volume archives (just split the regular ones into pieces), all of my old PKZips are somewhere on the floppies and I refuse to install any of that WinZip and WinRar shareware, so I can't say if that's a limitation of XP or Salamander.

EDIT] Windows 7 is just as bad, but at least says there's been an error during the extraction (using drag'n'drop on XP just did nothing).

[therube]

Not sure offhand about Vista/W7.

Multivolume ZIP archives are able to be extracted with W7's native ZIP utility.

Strange, I saw your post before your edit, yet my testing showed the opposite.

I created a multivolume (3-part as it was) archive. Copied those 3 files into a new directory. Opened that directory in Windows Explorer. Double clicked the .ZIP file. It showed the size correctly (as did XP too). I was able to successfully drag the file from the ZIP (or choose the Explorer Extract dialog) into a new directory, the file being recreated correctly.

can't say if that's a limitation of XP or Salamander

I've got to assume that it is a limitation of XP's ZIP implementation.

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ARJ was a true marvel of its time, IMO. Was far more robust & had a far more extensive feature set ("switches") compared to any other archiver around. LHA (lzh) was the first archiver I ever used. That peaked my interest. ARJ was my primary archiver even though it was nowhere near as popular as ZIP & later RAR. (At the time, for mainstream archivers, they all compressed about the same. RAR improved on the process, in particular with its "Solid" archiving. These days 7-Zip & RAR will generally yield the best results <again for "mainstream" archivers> depending on the file selection & compression methods used.)