Weird file form

[JSKILL]

Hey i have jus gotten a LEGAL download and the fileform is like weird letters and then .001, .002, .003 ect... to .052 and then the last one is a .sfv file. Now i was assuming these would be rar files but i have NEVER seen or heard of this kind of a file type any help appreciated.

[entropy]

What those are (the .001, .002, etc) are RAR archives. If you just right click on any of them, and say Extract To [filename]\ , it will automatically open and reassemble the original contents. What it did was split the file into little pieces (probably 14.2 megs or so?) and then compress them. That way you can save more disk space (not a ton, though). The sfv ... well, I've never figured out what they're for, but after extracting the files you can just delete the .sfv - I always do. That's assuming you delete the .001, .002... files after you've gotten their contents. If you want to keep them for archive purposes (can't imagine why), then it won't hurt to keep the .sfv. :)

[EMT]

The .sfv contains checksums to check the other files, making sure they're the same as the original distribution (you typically use a another program to check an sfv against the rest of a directory). So it isn't really necessary because the checksum there is probably redundant; I've never needed an sfv but it's nice to triple check or whatever on some big download. Anyway, yeah, WinRAR is what you want to deal with .001 etc, just tell it to open them or whatever even if they're not associated.

[Guyute]

FWIW go to www.file-ext.com for info on millions of file extension origins...