Five Popular File Compression Tools

1. 7-Zip (Windows/Linux, free) – The great thing about this particular compression tool is that it is open source. You don’t have to buy it and there’s no free trial that will expire in so many days. Another noticeable feature is that it is compatible with Windows 32-bit x86 and 64-bit x64. While there are more and more things being released that are compatible with these OS, it still can be a challenge sometimes to find anything compatible with 34-bit & 64-bit Microsoft computers.

Supported formats:

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  • Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM
  • Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z.

2. IZArc (Windows, Freeware) – This compression tool supports more formats than many other compression tools that I’ve seen. “7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CDI, CAB, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MBF, MDF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO”

3. WinRAR (Windows, Shareware) – I’m actually using this one at the moment. It costs $29 to get a license for it, but you can still use it after your free trial is up. You’ll just suffer through a couple pop-up screens each time you open it. It’s a really tiny screen so it’s not much of a bother. While WinRAR supports a widerange of formats, I mainly downloaded it because it supported RAR formats, and I really needed it to unzip some RAR files I had downloaded for some of my graphic programs. It works like a charm!

4. NXPowerLite Desktop Edition (Windows, Free Trial, #49.95) – “The dialog-size interface merely displays a list of files chosen to compress, a pull down menu to choose compression level, and an Optimize execution button. NXPowerLite works on Word, PowerPoint, and Excel file formats since Office 97.

5. PeaZip (Windows.Linux, Free) – Free, open-source, and supports almost as many formats as IZArc. You can “reate, convert and extract multiple archives at once, create self-extracting archives, bookmark archives and folders, apply powerful search filters, scan and open files with custom applications, apply strong encryption, split/join files, secure data deletion, calculate checksum and hash…”

Use Google to find out more about these File Compression Tools and to find the right one for you!