How in the Tech

Repairing Corrupted or Incomplete Zip Files

By Adam Myers ⋅ November 26, 2008 ⋅ Tags: File Management

Back in the day .zip files made the Internet go ’round. Cluster of files could be compressed and packaged together, allowing for easy distribution and speedy, relative to the time, downloads. When 5MB files would take half an hour to download, it wouldn’t be unheard of to have your dial-up modem boot you in mid download leaving you with a corrupted and incomplete zip. While modems have long since retired, the zip archive remains as the defacto standard for archive files.

Did you know that incomplete zip files can usually be repaired? Typically if you tried to use a zip utility to open a corrupt file the program would just refuse. Zip Repair from DiskInternals is a free utility that you can use in an attempt to at least extract some files from such a zip file.

1. Download and install Zip Repair from the DiskInternals website. The download link is near the bottom of the page.
2. Upon running the program, browse to the location of the corrupted Zip file. Then click Next.



3. Here you will see a listing of the the files that Zip Repair is able to recover from the provided Zip file. Hopefully what you are looking for is in this list, otherwise the Zip file is beyond repair unfortunately.



4. Click Next and then Finish to recreate a proper Zip file with the contents of the files in the previous step.