The Best File Archive Utility For Mac

1. Mac Os Archive Utility

Just about everything that gets stored electronically nowadays is compressed in some form or another. Whether it’s game discs, webpages, music, video, images, internet downloads or setup installers, most files are shrunk down from their original size to reduce the storage space they consume. One of the most popular and widely used file compression formats around today is ZIP which was developed by PKWare in 1989. Unlike JPG or MP3, ZIP is an archive format which allows you to store several files and also folders inside a single compressed ZIP file.

Living in the internet age, it’s beneficial if a file can be compressed to half its size before you upload or download it, and time. Of course, there are many file compression formats around besides ZIP, others such as RAR and 7z are also very well known.

ZIP archive compression is the only one which is natively supported out of the box by Windows, but like, there are better and faster alternatives. For more serious compression needs, dedicated archiver software that can handle ZIP or other better formats may be required. Many software archivers come with their own features but in the end what’s still important is the speed at which files can be compressed or extracted and the output size of the compressed file. There are many claims made about who’s fastest or offers the best compression rate, but you will never know who’s right until they’ve been tried out. Here we put 15 file archivers to the test to see which ones have the best compression rate plus the fastest speed. To cover common real world scenarios, we’re going to perform 3 compress and 2 extract tests for each archiver, there are two main sets of results.

The first is to test (de)compressing a ZIP file as it’s still the most common and widely used format. The second set of results is when using the best compression format the archiver has to offer. Finally we ran a quick test to see if each archiver can successfully open the (English version). This is a valid optimized JAR file that should be supported by most archiver’s, but some detect it as corrupt and won’t open what is a legitimate archive. If you wish to go straight to the tests and results, they can be found on. The Archiver Programs on Test We are going to test out the following 15 archivers, some free and some shareware. In each description is the result of whether the Omni.ja can be opened by the program and the setting used for the maximum compression tests.

7-Zip is one of the most well known and popular archivers around due to the 7z archive format which compresses files into much smaller sizes than ZIP. Being open source, 7z is now found in most other free and paid archiving applications. The stable version 9.20 has not been updated since 2010, but there are several newer alpha builds that keep development slowly moving. 7-Zip can compress to 7 formats and decompress to another 25 or so, including WIM, CAB, MSI, MBR and and VHD files. It’s also very useful to extract the contents of setup installers. Version tested: 9.20 (64-bit) Omni.ja Support: No (Yes in 9.32 alpha) Price: Free Max Compression used: 7z Ultra LZMA2 2. ALZip used to be shareware but has been made available to use for free by the developer, the product key is shown on their website when you download the program.

ALZip supports decompression of 40 archive formats such as 7z, RAR, CAB and ISO, and can compress to 8 different types that includes their own EGG format which offers generally better compression than ZIP. Useful options such as configuring an antivirus to scan manually, command line, span, merge and restore corrupted archives are all available. Version tested: 8.51 Omni.ja Support: Yes Price: Free Max Compression used: EGG Priority on compress ratio 3. B1 has versions for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android and calls itself a friendly and simple archiver. The program can only archive in ZIP or its own open source B1 format which uses LZMA compression. Nearly 30 formats can be extracted including 7z and ZIPX. Pay attention to the installer as it pre-ticks an option to send statistical data to B1, download the standalone setup file to get the full installer and not the online downloader.

The website also has a useful online unarchiver which can extract several different formats without needing software. Version tested: 1.4.69 Omni.ja Support: No Price: Free Max Compression used: B1 Ultra 4.

Bandizip is a program we’ve looked at in the past and it’s known for producing good compression ratios for the archives it creates. While not boasting tons of extra features apart from an image preview and viewer, it is a solid program with support for around 35 archive formats. These include ZIPX, RAR, APK, ISO, IMG, XPI and CAB, 8 of the formats can be used for compression. Something quite useful is an archive preview option in the context menu and the option to (de)compress multiple archives at once via right click.

Version tested: 3.09 Omni.ja Support: Yes Price: Free Max Compression used: 7z Level 3-Maximum Compression 5. The single biggest drawback of FreeArc is its inability to create any other type of archive apart from its own Arc format or an Arc based SFX executable.

However, it can extract several different formats such as ZIP, RAR, 7z, CAB without any trouble. FreeArc is a bit lacking in certain areas such as multivolume archives and storing attributes/extended timestamps/NTFS streams inside the archive, but it does have a compression format that offers potentially better compression than 7z. Although not updated since 2010, a new FreeArc 0.70 is an ongoing work in progress. Version tested: 0.666 Omni.ja Support: No Price: Free Max Compression used: Maximum 6. If you want a nice looking archiver, Hamster Free Zip certainly wins the prize there.

It’s also easy to use and intuitive but does only have support for compressing ZIP and 7z, ideal for this test though. Around 12 formats can be extracted, including RAR, ISO and CAB. An interesting option is the ability to create a ZIP/7z and then directly upload your archives to the cloud from within the program, Dropbox and Yandex are currently supported. A box during install needs unticking as it’s text is unreadable but installs adware if you don’t. Version tested: 3.0.0.34 Omni.ja Support: No Price: Free Max Compression used: 7z. Maximum 7. HaoZip is from China and has several useful additions besides the archiver itself.

These include a batch picture converter, batch renamer, batch string replacer, MD5 checksum compare, image Viewer and also an option to mount virtual disc images. HaoZip can compress to 11 archive types including 7z and decompress around 50. You can also use the simple built in malware/trojan scanner to check the files you’re working with.

There is a HaoZip 4 which decompresses the newer RAR5 and ZIPX formats but it’s currently only available in the Chinese language. Version tested: 3.0 (64-bit) Omni.ja Support: No Price: Free Max Compression used: 7z Ultra LZMA2 8.

KuaiZip is quite a small and simple archiver that also has its own KZ compression format (better compression than ZIP, but not as good as 7z) as well as the standard ZIP and 7z formats, around 40 archive types can be extracted. A useful feature is the ability to mount disc and virtual images such as APE, FLAC, NRG, ISO, MDS, VHD, VMDK and VDI. Similar to HaoZip (in looks as well), KuaiZip has a newer version available (2.3.2 is from 2011) but it’s only available in Chinese.

Version tested: 2.3.2 Omni.ja Support: No Price: Free Max Compression used: 7z Best 9. PeaZip isn’t so much an archiver in itself but is more of a frontend for other archivers and uses their command line versions to compress files, including 7-Zip and FreeArc. Because PeaZip uses other archivers the number of supported formats is quite impressive, around 150 for reading/extracting and 16 can be used for compression. Other useful options are an encrypted password manager, secure delete function and a simple file/image manager.

Watch for the adware during setup or use the portable version. Version tested: 5.2.1 Omni.ja Support: No Price: Free Max Compression used: Arc level 9 10. PKWare developed the ZIP archive format back in the late 80’s and PKZIP was the archiver that first used ZIP compression. The PKZIP program itself is perhaps a little behind the times these days in terms of what it can handle. The best type of archive it can create is ZIP (you can use different compression methods) although close to 20 different types can be opened and decompressed.

PKZIP can also integrate itself into Microsoft Outlook and other Office applications which allows you to work on documents direct from a ZIP file. Version tested: Omni.ja Support: Yes Price: $29 Max Compression used: NA On page 2 we’ll go through the other archivers and show the results of our tests. The test doesn’t say if Solid compression was used and what the dictionary sizes chosen were.

Harmonizing them across all archivers would be fair regardless of what the author has chosen for their “best” preset. I think FreeArc has a huge dict (and memory requirements) by default. Obviously the VDMK test was solid because it consists of one file. WinRAR has the most user friendly and accurate design.

All options are discoverable from the GUI. PeaZip and PA unfortunately always follow the latest design trends, and look quite ugly now. It was the ribbon here, now they have Metro style. The corporate bloat starts at their installers already. While FreeArc compresses well, only a few programs can extract this experimental format. I think it is unreliable.

7-Zip Zstandard is a good new format, combining fast speed and large dictionary. Other formats offer either one (Zip) or the other (Lzma), with RAR somewhere inbetween on the scale, but not free. Zstd is good for backups where duplicate files are likely to occur, or large file transfers or installs that have to be done in reasonble time. Several years after and yet this article still compells comments from readers! Kudos for this well put analysis. I’ve been trying out archives hoping to find the best (I prefer compression ratio over speed) and this article spared me a lot of time and effort trying them all out.

My top choice has been 7z LZMA2 (using 7-zip), until a few days ago when I tried Arc (using FreeArc). Even though it lacks splitting into volumes/parts, I’ve had better compression ratios (38%) while archiving huge games.

Since I burn the archives onto DVDs, splitting is a must have feature for me. My workaround has been simple; I simply zip (using Winrar) the arc output of FreeArc and split them into DVD5-fit parts, but with compression level set to “store” or “none”, so that extraction is a two-stage process, one being the extraction of the multi-part zip archive, and the second being the extraction of the arc archive.

Again, kudos for putting this information up, came in really handy. I wish you had used more than a maximum 2.54 GB size data set; that really isn’t very much. Right now I’m looking to compress the contents of an external USB drive; the drive is 250 GB but the data total is only 106 GB of that. But that 106 GB is still way larger than the sizes used in any of the tests performed. Granted, I’m not sure when the tests were done, but the Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU dates from 2007 and that probably represents 5 “generations” or so in computer time. Still, your results are good to know as they give a general idea ( eg.

I don’t think UltimateZip would win any contests on an i5 at the present time either ) thanks for this. You raise some interesting points but trying to compress 100GB+ for testing would have taken simply far too long.

We would have needed to compress that 100GB 30 separate times and decompressed it another 30 times, that is simply unworkable. In my opinion using the sizes we did in all the tests are far closer to what the average user is going compress, compressing the sizes you mention are rare and for niche purposes only. As for the hardware, that is simply what I have in my test PC and even though it’s old, it still compares reasonably well with the average PC or laptop CPU of today. We could have used an i7 system with 16GB of RAM, but again, that is unrepresentative of what the majority of people have. Some sites like to test on high end hardware, we like to test or normal hardware. I like WinRAR and personally use it. This isn’t about not rating something and simply about hard facts, and the facts are during our tests WinRAR does fine when zipping but the RAR format really can’t live with 7z in terms of compression.

Of course WinRAR doesn’t have malware in it, VirusTotal is a guide only and shouldn’t be fully relied on. You have to look at what antivirus are saying it’s malware and what they are saying. Just looking now, the 1 saying it’s malicious is reporting “Trojan/Win32.SGeneric”, the generic bit in there means it’s guessing (and getting it wrong). I mentioned this before but Bandizip has a limitation with 7z files. It won’t let you edit the contents. Try creating a text file and store it to 7z archive. Then open it and try to edit, rename, or delete the file.

It won’t let you. This automatically makes me unable to use Bandizip as my main archiving program. I think every other archiver lets you edit the contents of 7z files. Bandizip also does not offer file name encryption for 7z.

7-zip STILL has the flaw with their file name encryption. Create a text file and add it to 7z, password protect it, and choose encrypt file names. Then open the 7z and drag another file to the window and save it. Close and re-open.

The file name encryption is gone. And there’s no way to add it back. You have to create a whole new archive. Also development for 7-zip is at a snail’s pace. I think Haozip is the best free one. It has good features and performance and none of these flaws, no disadvantages that I can see.

I think it’s wise to keep several archiving programs in case one fails you but for main use Haozip gets my vote. ZIP is still by far the most used compression format, among other things, you can ZIP/UnZIP something in any recent version of Windows without software. Most software that uses some form of compression will use ZIP as well, RAR is not a free format so cannot usually be used to compress files unless you pay to include it in your software, only decompress is free to use in RAR’s case. It’s not that cyberlockers use RAR, it’s all to do with “scene” rules and people uploading the content as it was compressed by the hackers and crackers that created it.

In the Max compression test, WinRAR obviously uses RAR to compress. As you can see it doesn’t compress that great compared to 7z but is better than ZIP and comparable to ZIPX.

IZArc isn’t included ummm why? I’m not so much challenging your decision not to include it as I’m just wondering if I’m misguided in my long-term liking of it. I know it opens a whole lot of formats; and compresses a bunch, too. Sadly, the maker sometimes includes crapware/adware in the installer which can usually be opted-out of except for this latest version does a little bit of a scare tactic that lit-up my anti-virus software at first; but, in the end, the badness somehow didn’t make it onto my machine. I sent him one of my angriest (but not abusive, mind you; but just really upset) emails ever.

It almost put me off of IZArc, after all these years. But all that notwithstanding, I always thought that IZArc was one of the better ones; some say the best. Enlighten me!

Before IZArc started all this adware nonsense, it was one of the free archivers I would recommend to people because it was easy to use and supported quite a lot of formats. Offering crapware which you cannot opt out of crosses the line for me though. When you try to install, the first screen offers crapware, click Cancel and it cancels the IZArc install totally, click Next and it installs the crapware so you cannot choose not to install it.

Reviews at download sites like CNET or Softpedia have torn IZArc to shreds in recent months, and rightly so in this case IMO. And Raymond (CC) is cooooooming back, ladies and gentlemen!:) Nice work! For me, still working WinRAR and 7-Zip Plus Bandizip, from 2013, after some personal tests; love it. I tried Haozip, Kuaizip, AlZip, UltimateZip and Winarchiver too, but Bandizip was my choice.

Mac Os Archive Utility

Last month I tested an old friend, PowerArchiver, but the new version 2013 (v14, all builds) came with an ancient error of this software: the “Explorer needs to close” one. This bug was present in v12 too, but not in v13, figure it! I’ve heard of it before but virtually no-one else I know has. Apart from popping up in the odd giveaway and the advertising when it came out, MagicRAR is almost completely unknown. If you look at download portals like CNET it gets no more than 2 or 3 downloads a WEEK, as for search engine traffic to the website, there appears to be maybe up to 5 visitors a day.

By anyones definition, those sorts of numbers are not for a well known or popular software, and is a simple reason why I chose not to test as it’s maybe number 19 or 20 on my list. Nice comparison. After trying most of the freeware you tested, I settled on FreeArc for a couple reasons: its speed beats, and compression equals, 7-Zip (my previous favorite), and its encryption capabilities include both a number of algorithm choices and the ability to use a key file simultaneously or sequentially. PeaZip provided most of the same features, but adding files to an existing archive didn’t work well for me. Quite a bit of what I do is extremely confidential, and I need to store a backup in the cloud, so encryption is critical for me. You might want to consider that among the factors you use to compare file archivers.

Don’t know if it would pass your Omni.ja test, though.

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