Extracting Stuffit 5 Archives in Windows

Updated September 10, 2012

Using Stuffit for Windows to unpack Mac files is problematic: Stuffit for Windows discards the resource fork of Mac files, which makes applications unusable in Mac OS.

Of course, applications can be expanded inside an emulated environment, but if this is not possible, a solution is to use The Unarchiver for Windows together with HFV Explorer.

Install The Unarchiver for Windows.

To unpack a Stuffit archive simply go to the Windows command line and type “unar -k hfv [archive name]” and you'll get a convenient folder with everything neatly arranged for copying with HFV Explorer. The Unarchiver supports a whole bunch of old Macintosh formats, so this should work with all flavors of Stuffit and perhaps everything else that might be out there.

Here's what it looks like on the command line. In this case, I've copied rescue2.0.5.sit to the folder where I unzipped unar1.2_win.zip from the aforementioned link:

Here's what it looks like in Windows Explorer. Notice that there are four files that start with % and four corresponding files that do not, including a zero-byte file corresponding to the empty data fork of the main Rescue! 2.0.5 application:

If you subsequently use HFV Explorer to browse to the folder to which you extracted your files, you should see it neatly laid out exactly like it would appear in the Finder, ready for copying. Here's what the folder above looks like in HFV Explorer:

Copy mode should be “Automatic, let the program decide,” with “Check for AppleDouble” checked.

Executor will do the trick (copying) as well. I understand that Executor actually came up with the naming convention first, and HFV Explorer adopted it:

This guide was written and illustrated by our friend Jorpho. Communicate with him on the message board thread where the guide originated.