UHARC GUI4.0.0.2

UHARC defines a high compression multimedia archiver developed by Uwe Herklotz from 1997 to 2005. The project's last iteration is the 0.6 Beta version and it features a command line-based executable file with no GUI at all.

Nothing more than what the name suggests

As its performance and compression rates are indeed remarkable, the archiver received, through the years, a number of friendly graphical user interfaces that make it easier for users of any IT level to benefit from all the goods that UHARC has to offer. Compression tools category features many GUIs especially created for UHARC, with WinUHA and UHARC GUI being the highlights of their section. UHARC GUI comprises a single executable file that provides three main options upon running: 'Create new archive', 'Extract archive' and 'Convert to SFX'.

Several compression settings available

The application also gives access to a language selection area; however, this is not implemented and the only option here is English. You are able to build a file and folder list up to 2 GB in size for the program to create a UHA archive from it. The correspondent options refer to compression settings (mode, dictionary size and multimedia compression), directory processing settings (recurse subdirectories and store paths) as well as encryption settings (password and mode).

Time-consuming process with powerful outcome

The archiving process takes a while longer than your typical ZIP, RAR or 7Z archive creation time interval, but it's 10% stronger than RAR and at least 1-2% more powerful than 7Z. The second option of the software, 'Extract existing archive', requires you to browse for a UHA file in order to get its contents to a location of your choice. You also get information regarding its number of files, compression and ratio as well as the possibility to verify the files before you extract them.

Useful but not yet implemented

Another option yet to be implemented is 'Convert to SFX' within the main menu of the application. This should ask for a UHA archive file and turn it into an EXE file that does not require any third-party decompressor to extract its stored files and folder to a certain destination.

To end with

All in all, UHARC GUI provides a well-built yet incomplete interface for the highly-acclaimed archiver and since the compression tool itself did not receive an update in the last few years, so the GUI will not, probably, get a new version. Besides that, it serves the UHARC tool good and only lacks SFX and multi-language support compared to its direct rival – WinUHA.