Rared file size and content's size discrepancy

[sunday11a]

I some time back downloaded a file relating to linux teaching material from a p2p network (maybe torrent)
The file has .rar extension and the size of the file is shown to be 114 mb
Whereas when i extracted its contents to a folder, the folder's size is reported to be just 20 mb
I wonder why the rar archive file size is reported to be so much. Recovery record is also present in the archive, but i dont think with a recovery record being put into it the file size increases to 5 times the original.
Could there be something else also contained in it which is not visible normally.

Can someone throw some light on this.

[nihil]

That does sound strange.

Try copying the file to a file with a different name and check the size again.

Make sure that when you unpack it you select "extract all" rather than selected files, that should show you if there is anything else in there?

[sunday11a]

"Try copying the file to a file with a different name and check the size again" what exactly do u want me to do, i dont get ur point.

To wherever i copy the file the size is always reported same 114 MB.
The amount of time taken also is same as it would take for a real 114 MB sized file.
As it contain recovery record. I even ran repair on it and the fixed archive also had the same size(114MB).
Have tried extracting with all possible ways using winrar, and the extracted files in any case always report size to be 20 MB.

I also checked it for hidden streams (both the archive and the extracted contents), with ADS spy 1.07, and didnot find any associated streams with it.

[nihil]

"Try copying the file to a file with a different name and check the size again" what exactly do u want me to do, i dont get ur point.

What I was suggesting is save "abc.rar" as "xyz.rar" and then look at the size of xyz.rar

This is very strange, and should not have anything to do with the recovery record.............after all if you had a complete backup of the files they would only come to 40Mb?

What intrigues me is that you have 94Mb unaccounted for.............that is enormous! Do you still have the download log? what size does that show?

To look at it from a different perspective, does the content you can extract seem complete? most training stuff has an index at the front........is everything there?

What operating system are you using?

I would try downloading another .rar decompression application and see what that does. Also I would save the file as a .txt and open it in "Wordpad" (notepad cannot handle that size) and see if it is packed with a load of blanks?

WARNING: this will take some time

This is really quite interesting............thank you for sharing

[sunday11a]

Checked with renaming the file and same case
Checked for the stuff and really dont know if anything is missing.
On the main interface many links dont come up with anything like link to ebook, but the ebook is in there.
Will check by opening in wordpad soon.
I dont have the download log. The file was downloaded some time back and had recently had to reinstall the OS. At the time i downloaded the file, just went through the archive , seeing the folders and files. Didnot check properly then.
OS is win2kpro sp4 patched.

[nihil]

Hmmm,

Well it sounds as if you might have a corrupted download, but then I would expect error messages when you try to decompress.

I am not sure if this is possible, but might you have a hybrid archive? Some elements sre compressed, and others not. Please do not ask me how or why, it is a pure guess

Does WINRAR let you open with an option something like "Display all readable files"? that might show you if there is anything else in there?

Good luck

EDIT: If the files are fragmented, then you may not have all the parts, so WINRAR cannot reassemble the files they contain. There is not much you can do about this apart from download what you have not got.

These sort of files will be numbered, either in the body or the file extension.

[sunday11a]

I opened the file in wordpad and .......... the whole of the file is filled with blanks. Wordpad shows boxes (i think means null).
Dont know why would some one do that.

[heinouskyle]

Use a hex editor to open it. I think that would let you know for sure that it's an empty file or not. I've had this issue once before, and I had to re-download my file.