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Repair a corrupted ZIP file

When you see 'archive is broken', split the problem into download corruption, transfer mishap, or missing central directory — and recover accordingly.

By FileHint editorial teamSupervised by Netwiz LLCEditorial policy

First, narrow it down

  1. Re-download to rule out transient transfer errors.
  2. Compare the hash with the publisher's value.
  3. Verify the central directory exists (unzip -l should list entries).

7-Zip repair workflow

  • Open the archive > right-click > Open (read-only).
  • Tools > Test to see which entries are unreadable.

zip -F / -FF (CLI)

zip -F broken.zip --out fixed.zip     # light repair
zip -FF broken.zip --out fixed.zip    # aggressive repair

When to give up

  • If the central directory of an encrypted archive is gone, recovery is effectively impossible.
  • For multi-volume archives, any missing volume means you have to re-download the set.

Related

Related extensions

References