Name: ^MusT@QeeM^
DOB: 02-14-85
Education:
Location: Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA
Interests: anything to do with 'fresh gear' and 'zip file'
Likes: subject to change
Dislikes: is something relative more?
adoptions.. List of
upcoming events:
10/25 : LKS program in Hotel Seri Malaysia
Figure out what those mysterious file extensions mean.
By Kevin Rose
If you're new to the darker side of the Internet (P2P networks, FTP servers, IRC), you'll soon find yourself presented with many unfamiliar file formats. I'll explain some of these formats on today's show. I'll also show you a handy reference card you can download.
Here are some detailed explanations of commonly used file extensions that may be unfamiliar to you.
Common compressed file extensions
RAR
RAR acts much like the popular Zip format, and it can be extracted in much the same way. To extract RAR files, don't use WinZip. You need an application such as WinRAR.
001, 002, 003
When a file is too large to fit into a single archive, it's often broken down into sections. Files with these extensions are using RAR compression. There's usually a single RAR file as the mother archive, followed by a sequential progression of 001, 002, and so on for the entire archive. You need all parts of the archive in order to complete an extraction.
ACE, ARC, ARJ, BH, CAB, GZ, JAR, LHA, LZH, RAR, TAR, TGZ, Z, ZIP, ZOO, XXE, UUE
These are less-common compression types. There are a whole slew of applications that can extract these file formats. For my favorites, see the reference card.
Other files types
TORRENT
These are BitTorrent loader files. Clicking and downloading a .torrent file will launch the external application BitTorrent, which pulls your requested file from multiple sources until the file is complete.
NFO and DIZ
Often found inside RAR files, these files are used to describe the contents of the archive. Open them with WordPad or my favorite, Damn NFO Viewer.
ISO
This is the standard for data CDs (ISO 9660). ISO images are usually exact CD images ready to be burned to CD. Almost all distributions of Linux can be found in ISO format.
