Considered to be the third most widely used and best reputed file compression software, PeaZip is actually at the very top of the open-source/free file compression software list. This tool can read and extract nearly all existing archive file formats and create new compressed files both in its own format (PEA) and in some of the most common ones, ZIP and 7Z included.
Why PeaZip appears below WinZip and WinRAR on the above-mentioned list is simply beyond me. Those two not only ask for a license fee to unleash their full potential, but they also lack the functionality that PeaZip offers you for free. They are all secure, efficient, and reliable, but, amazingly, some users still prefer to pay for roughly the same functions they could enjoy free of charge. If curious, you can take a look at some of the benchmark tests available, and you’ll find that PeaZip can compress and decompress a ZIP file faster than WinZip itself...
PeaZip has been around since 2006, and it is considered by experts to be the file compression tool with the best file support rate. It is, by far, the program that can read and open more archive formats – over 150, a figure that no paid or free competitor can beat. It can also create ZIP, 7Z, ARC, TAR, and WIM archives (among others), and offers you its own high-quality compression algorithm and format, PEA, with AES256 EAX authenticated encryption. All the most highly rated encryption standards are supported for 7Z, ZIP, ARC, and PEA files, and even for RAR if it happens to be installed on your system. And the great thing is that being an open-source development, PeaZip improves its numbers on every iteration, especially regarding processing speeds and RAM usage.
What I love about PeaZip is that on top of performing as the high-end compression tool that it is, it comes with a plethora of other utilities. And I’m not referring just to PeaUtils, useful as this set of tools is, but to its archive converter, its password manager, its secure random password creator, its archive analyzer, its duplicate file finder, its file splitter and joiner, etc. The list is too long to reproduce here, so – being a free tool – I’ll leave the rest for you to discover.
PeaZip is, undoubtedly, everything you need to open and create archive files with the best compression algorithms and the highest level of security. And if that is not enough to make you download and install it on your desktop, think of the wealth of other utilities and features that come with it at no cost whatsoever.
v7.3 [May 18, 2020]
CODE:
- Various fixes.
FILE MANAGER:
- Added support to more file extensions:
- .cramfs compressed ROM/RAM file system images.
- .ext, .ext2, .ext3, and .ext4 filesystem images.
- .hfsx filesystem images.
- .qcow, and .qcow2c QEMU disk images.
- .scap, and .uefif firmware files.
- .mub, .pkg, and .ppmd compressed files.
- Archive browser now will automatically ask for password to open files with unreadable TOC, for all formats supporting TOC encryption, e.g. archives encrypted with "Encrypt also file names" option.
- Fixed browsing of encrypted ARC files.
- Fixed: can now delete files within WIM archives.
EXTRACTION and ARCHIVING:
- [Prototype] Support for RAR compression if WinRar 64 or 32 bit is installed in the system (Windows).
- Setting Custom compression type optionally aut-configures PeaZip to use RarLab's Rar.exe as compressor; if libre_directive option is set to 2 (most restrictive, not allowing closed archive formats), rar creation will be not allowed in any case.
- Rar.exe will be set to use PeaZip's work dir as other backend binaries.
- For RAR archives it is possible to set.
- compression level, from store to maximum.
- action: new archive, add, update, freshen, sync with disk.
- spanning in multiple volumes.
- password, optionally with two factor authentication (password keyfile).
- create RAR5 or legacy RAR4 archive.
- (RAR5) set dictionary size 1..1024 MB.
- (RAR5) use BLAKE2 hash instead of CRC checksum.
- Create self extracting RAR.
- Solid archive.
- Recovery records.
- Save files open for writing.
- Save NT security information.
- Save NTFS streams.
- Set archive time to last modified object.
- Improved support for more RAR options is planned in future, to allow efficient RAR creation from PeaZip GUI, providing RarLab's WinRar is installed in the system and Rar.exe is available.
