Can unrar Repair a Broken Archive?

The standalone command-line utility unrar cannot natively repair a broken or corrupted archive. While it can detect corruption using its integrity test function, the actual repair routine is deliberately excluded from unrar and is only available in the full rar command-line utility or the graphical WinRAR application. However, unrar does allow users to salvage usable data from damaged archives by ignoring read errors during extraction.

Why unrar Cannot Repair Archives

The unrar executable is a lightweight, freeware tool distributed exclusively for viewing and decompressing RAR archives. Its command set is limited to operations such as extracting (x, e), testing (t), and listing (l, v).

The repair command (r) belongs strictly to the full rar program. Even in environments with the complete archiver installed, rebuilding a damaged archive natively is only possible if the archive was initially created with an embedded recovery record (RR) or recovery volumes (.rev).

How to Salvage Files Using unrar

Even though unrar cannot fix corrupted headers or rebuild missing sectors, it can prevent corrupted files from being automatically deleted after an extraction error. By default, unrar discards incomplete or corrupt files upon encountering a checksum (CRC) mismatch.

To force unrar to retain broken files during extraction, use the -kb (Keep Broken) switch:

unrar x -kb archive.rar

This command extracts all readable data, allowing you to access intact sections of large media files, text archives, or undamaged files inside a multi-file archive.

The Correct Way to Repair a Corrupted RAR File

To perform an actual repair without third-party tools, you must switch from unrar to the full rar command-line package or the WinRAR desktop client.

1. Via Command Line (rar): Execute the repair command:

   rar r archive.rar

   If a recovery record exists, the tool reconstructs the damaged blocks and outputs a new file named fixed.archive.rar.

2. Via Graphical Interface (WinRAR): Open the archive in WinRAR, navigate to Tools, and select Repair archive (or press Alt + R). Choose whether to treat the file as a standard RAR or ZIP format, and click OK.

Without a pre-existing recovery record, neither rar nor WinRAR can reconstruct missing data, meaning forced extraction via unrar -kb is typically the only native option for salvaging content.