When people talk about compression formats, they usually limit themselves to ZIP or RAR. The most common compression format ‘ZIP’ is so widespread and renowned that it has almost become a verb. People “Zip” files before emailing them, same as people “Google” things on the internet.
As common as ZIP may be, it isn’t the best. RAR isn’t the best either, as per the expert’s opinion on PC advisor and Tom’s Hardware; 7z is the best compression format. Its official reference implementation is 7zip.
7ZIP For Microsoft Windows
7ZIP can be described as an open source file archiver designed originally for Microsoft Windows.
In simple words 7-Zip can be described as an open source file archiver designed originally for Microsoft Windows. 7-Zip can operate primarily with the 7z archive format, as well as being able to read and write to several other archive formats. A user of 7ZIP can use the command line interface, graphical user interface, or Windows shell integration. In the year 2000 7-Zip began and is actively developed by Igor Pavlov. It is related to a cross-platform port, p7zip.
You can compress anything you want with it
A key advantage that 7zip enjoys is that it is secure, and it cannot be opened by email providers so you can compress anything you want with it, and email it easily. However this is not the case with Zip or RAR. Most email providers nowadays snoop into Zip, RAR and some other compression formats, and if there are some executable files in them then you won’t be allowed to send that in email. So it is advised that if you want to send an.exe file via email, then compress it using 7zip first.
It is very important to mention that unlike WinZip and WinRAR programs, which are distributed under proprietary licenses, 7-Zip is actually distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. 7-Zip has also been the winner of the SourceForge.net 2007 community choice awards for “Technical Design” and for “Best Project”.
There are so many features that 7-Zip supports which may not be found in popular commercial compression software. Here we will discuss all the features of 7ZIP, so read it carefully.
7z archives support the 256-bit AES cipher for encryption and it can be enabled for both files and the 7z directory structure. The users are required to supply a password especially when the directory structure is encrypted, to see the filenames contained within the archive, unless only the data was encrypted but not the filenames. WinZip-developed AES encryption standard is also available in 7-Zip to encrypt ZIP archives with AES 256-bit. It doesn’t offer filename encryption like in 7z archives.
Supports a number of other compressions, and non-compression, archive formats
It also flexibly supports volumes of dynamically variable sizes, useful for backups on removable media such as writable CDs and DVDs. When it is in 2-panel mode, it can be considered as a basic orthodox file manager. Multiple CPU / core / threading settings can be configured.
It has ability to attempt to open EXE files as archives. (Useful for decompressing data from inside many “SetUp” or “Installer” or “Extract” type programs without having to launch them) It also has an ability to browse and extract data from ISO data images/archives. 7-Zip can unpack archives with corrupted filenames, renaming the files as required. 7-Zip can also create self-extracting archives although cannot do so for multi-volume archives. It also supports a number of other compression, and non-compression, archive formats. Some of the supported formats include packing/unpacking of ZIP, gzip, bzip2, tar.
Don’t forget to visit the 7-zip, as this is the official website for 7ZIP and you will get all the information here. 7Zip is highly recommended and you can get this idea from the reviews which are posted online by the users. These reviews are honest opinions.
It’s that simple! Once you get used to 7zip and the 7z format you will never be able to let it go!
Compressing, opening, and splitting files is very easy with 7zip. Furthermore it gives a 25% higher compression ratio then Zip. You can easily verify this by files on your computer. For compressing any file, open 7zip file manager, and navigate to the file that you want to compress. Once you have selected the file then click add, The ‘Add to Archive’ dialog box will pop up. Select Zip, and click OK.
