So finally your friends sent you a ZIP archive file containing all the important files that you have been asking them for. And finally you open this ZIP file using any ZIP archive tool only to find that this ZIP file is corrupt. It really is annoying if the original file is really very big and you cannot keep downloading it again and again. In that case, it is better to fix the corrupt ZIP archive instead of looking for the original source ZIP file. There are many tools to fix a corrupt ZIP file, for example, the popular archive utility Bandizip is able to repair corrupt ZIP archives.
Here is how you can repair corrupt ZIP archives with the help of Bandizip:
- Download Bandizip and install it on your system. You can also use portable version of Bandizip that does not require any installation.
- Launch Bandizip and select Tools → Repair archives from the menubar.
- In the window that opens up, select a corrupt ZIP file that you want to repair and then click on the Start Repair button.
- Depending on the size of the ZIP archive, it will take a short or a long time to repair this file. In the end you will have a file with the “.repair” appended to the filename.
The original file is not destroyed, it is copied as a new file and then repaired. You can now open this file in any ZIP archive utility like Bandizip or 7-zip. Any problem with the ZIP file should be fixed now. However, it should be noted that Bandizip can fix only the file structural problems with ZIP files such as the central directory structure or the data descriptor. It cannot really fix a ZIP archive file that has the proper header but is missing the data or a ZIP file that is unexpectedly truncated.