I know RAR isn't the coolest archive format but it has particular strengths for data preservation. Namely, built-in recovery records and effectively no archive

I know RAR isn't the coolest archive format but it has particular strengths for data preservation. Namely, built-in recovery records and effectively no archive size limit. It is more reliable than most other archives in my experience though I prefer ZIP for general compatibility. Compressed TAR is not great for random access though I think you can create indexed tarballs which helps.