up vote 3 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

I've got a quad core Intel processor. I've got a big file split into little ones as RAR files, foo.r00, foo.r01, etc. which the RAR program extracts into one file/directory. Is there a RAR program that I can specify like "use four cores" in the extract process? At the moment it sits there using 100% of one core. I recognise the bottleneck might be my hard drive anyway, but I don't see a lot of HD usage and suspect the decompression process is more intensive than waiting on I/O.

For example, GNU Make accepts a (-j, I think) argument to tell it how many cores to use, which I used to compile PHP 6 really quickly.

link|improve this question
100% accept rate
feedback

2 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

http://www.7-zip.org/ supports multi-threading, but you'll probably be HDD bottle necked.

link|improve this answer
feedback
up vote 2 down vote

I know 7-Zip supports multiple threads, but I believe it only supports up to 2 threads, and then only when compressing. Most compression algorithms (RAR included I am sure) are optimized for fast decompression, so most likely you are throttled by the disk I/O. Additionally RAR is a solid archive, making it a single data block internally, so you cannot decompress individual chunks separately (since there is only one).

link|improve this answer
Solid archive is an option, default off. And how is that relevant to this question? – Pyrolistical Aug 7 '09 at 0:26
To divide decompression between threads you would need to give each thread its own data block. With a solid archive there can be only one data block. If solid is off then it might be an option. – Jim McKeeth Aug 7 '09 at 0:30
Its not that simple. You might still be able to use multiple threads. It really depends on the data format. – Pyrolistical Aug 7 '09 at 0:33
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.