Informazioni sui file CAB

CAB (Windows Cabinet · Formato archivio)

Rilasciato 1994 Di Microsoft

Windows Cabinet (.cab) è un formato di file standard supportato da KaijuConverter per l’archiviazione, la condivisione e la conversione multipiattaforma.

Famiglia

Archives & Compressed

Estensione

.cab

Tipo MIME

application/vnd.ms-cab-compressed

Utilizzabile come

Input

La storia

COME CAB
È NATO.

CAB — Microsoft Cabinet — shipped in 1994 with Windows 95 setup as the installation-archive format that replaced the DIZ/ARJ/ZIP patchwork of the DOS era. The format supports LZX compression (originally from Jonathan Forbes, licensed by Microsoft), MSZIP (a DEFLATE variant), and Quantum. A .cab file can span multiple disks — a design detail that mattered when Windows 95 shipped on 13 floppy disks.

CAB became the backbone of Windows installations for three decades. Every Windows Update, every .msi installer, every Office setup disk, every Service Pack: all built on CAB. Even today, many Windows system files are distributed as CAB archives, and the format is supported natively in Windows 10/11 via the `expand.exe` tool and Windows Explorer.

CURIOSITÀ E
ANEDDOTI.

Windows 95 shipped on 13 floppy disks — every one a CAB file segment of the installer.

The LZX compression inside CAB came from a program called LZX, originally for Amiga archives, which Microsoft licensed in the early 1990s.

Every Microsoft Office installer (MSI) is backed by CAB archives for the binary payload.

Windows Update delivers patches as CAB files — the Windows Update Agent downloads and extracts them silently.

The format can span disks: a single archive can be split across multiple .cab files with the same basename.

PUNTI DI FORZA E
LIMITAZIONI.

Punti di forza

Multi-volume — designed for disk-spanning archives.
Multiple compression algorithms in one format.
Native Windows support for 30+ years.
Authenticode signing integrates with Windows security stack.
Microsoft-maintained tooling (MAKECAB, EXTRAC32, expand.exe).

Limitazioni

Windows-only ecosystem — limited Mac/Linux tooling.
Proprietary container with partial public documentation.
Overtaken by MSI (which uses CAB internally) for new installers.
Compression ratios lag modern formats (zstd, xz).

Dimensioni e pesi tipici

Single driver package

100 KB - 20 MB

Windows Update patch

1-500 MB

Service pack archive

200 MB - 2 GB

Specifiche tecniche

MIME type: application/vnd.ms-cab-compressed
Extension: .cab
Compression: MSZIP (DEFLATE), Quantum, LZX
Max volume size: 2 GB per file
Multi-volume: Yes (split archive spanning)

CONVERTI DA
CAB

cab zip cab 7z cab tar cab gz cab bz2 cab xz cab lzma cab zst cab lz4

Casi d'uso comuni

Windows installers, drivers