Tutorial on splitting and combining files (WinRAR and HJSplit)

at The Help Center a lot of people ask about recombining files, password-protected files, and stuff like that so I thought it might be useful to create a tutorial on this subject

the programs that are mostly used for these purposes are WinRAR and HJSplit
a cracked version of winrar can be found on this board using the search function, or following this link
Code:
http://www.forumw.org/viewtopic.php?t=284169

hjsplit is a freeware program and can be found using google or following this link:
Code:
http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/


when I want to upload a movie (like The Butterfly Effect in this example) or a game to, say rapidshare, I need to split it into files sized 100MB at most
I'll first discuss winrar-split files (and I assume you have Winrar installed)

Creating split files using winrar

the easiest way to do so, is just right clicking on the file and select "Add to archive..."


You'll have a small winrar-window looking like this


In the lower right corner you can enter how large the parts can be, for RS this is 100MB so enter 100m (small m gives "informatical mega", big M gives "science mega" being 10^6) as shown in the picture, inside the red cicle (afterwards it will recount itself to bytes, being 104). If you leave this option black the file won't be split
The green circle shows the rate of compression, the better the smaller the file should be but this requires a more time, also note that most shared formats like mp3 and avi are already compressed formats so compressing them again will have hardly any effect.
The blue circle indicates two options that I always indicate, but these don't have to be checked.




this is really all you need to know, some more things are optional, for instance if you have a setting that's different from the default setting of winrar you can save these settings in a profile. this can be done using the profiles button.
Remember that every setting at that moment will be saved in the profile, so if you set a password it will be saved too

how can you create a password protected file? go to the "Advanced" tab and select "Set password..." always best to enable the "Show password" option. when you check the "Encrypt file names" option, the names of the files inside the archives will be encrypted and thus not visible,but they will set to normal once the files are extracted. Remember that the password is case-sensitive, so ForumW is not the same as forumw!!



you can include comment on the right side of the archive using the last tab and entering the comment you want



This is what the file looks like after compressed and split (both actions are done by winrar)




Combining split files using winrar

winrar is only capable of combining split files it created itself. These files always have filenames that look like
.part1.rar
.part2.rar
...

to extract the file(s) inside the archive just right click a file (or open one, the rest is similar) and select what you want to do:
"Extract files..." lets you select (or create) a map anywhere on your computer to extract the archived files to
"Extract Here" extracts the archived files to the same map that contains the .rar-files
"Extract to \" extracts the files to a map with the name of the filename, created inside the map that contains the .rar-files


Note that some archived files contain a map themselves
I selected "Extract Here" the I get this window asking for a password, just enter it and press ok. Again, remember the password is case-sensitive


then the file extracts and appears in the specified folder





Creating split files using hjsplit

it's a stand-alone application, so there's no need to install it, just start the application and select "Split"
The split-window will appear, as shown below



Click on "Input File" and browse to the file you want to split
If you don't want the split files to be stored in the same map as the original file, you can change this by clicking the "Output" button


Then you only have to press start to finish the job:


Then a box will pop-up saying the job is completed just press ok, and then close the Split-window




Combining split files using hjsplit
like winrar, hjsplit is only capable of combining split files it created itself. They look like:
..001
..002
...

to combine the files open hjsplit and select "Join"


then click "Input File" browse and select the file you want to combine. Note that you have to select only the first file (the other ones won't appeared anyway). By default the combined file is stored in the same map as the split files, to specify a different map click on "Output" then you can browse or create a map you want. Finally select "Start" to join the files


Finally a box will pop up saying the joining is complete, just press ok, and then close the Join-window


you're all done!

If you have any problems just leave a comment
If you can't see the pictures, PM me I'll upload them to another image host


Tutorial created by chiMicke