PeaZip just recently has been updated to version 3 that introduces several new options and features. Peazip 3 is available as a portable version or an installer for Windows and for Linux as well. The data compression software offers full support for the popular formats 7z, gz, tar and zip and can extract dozens more including rar, gzip or cab.

The program obviously supports the standard operations that all the popular archivers offer. The additional options provided by PeaZip 3 on the other hand make it interesting at least for some uses.

Peazip 3 supports for instance archive encryption with a password or keyfile, secure deletion of files from within the program, advanced filters to include or exclude files, multiple basic and advanced editor support, system tool access like defragmentation, converting a disk to NTFS or cleaning up the disk and add-on support to increase the program’s functionality.

The file compression software has lots of options that make it interesting. Users who want to download PeaZip can do so at the project’s homepage at Sourceforge.

For most old-school Linux users, creating archive consisted of dropping to the command line and issue a command like tar cfz directory.tgz directory (where directory is the name of the directory to archirve). But new users fear the command line. So, thanks to GNOME, there is an easier way to achieve this.

The folder right click menu.

If you open up the Nautilus File Manger and right click on a folder you will see the menu shown in the image to the left.

By clicking the “Create Archive” entry a new window will appear that allows you to configure the archive you want to create. This new window allows you to configure the type of compression, the location and name of the archive, and (if you have encryption enabled), add encryption and split into volumes.

Configure your archive

Once you have configured your archive click the Create button and the archive will automatically be placed in the Location you chose.

Take note of the file extension. This extension will determine if the archive is compressed or not. There are eight possible options to choose from. If you want compression I would suggest going with either the .tgz or the tar.bz2 extensions.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve ever wanted simple and fast archiving, GNOME has just the tool for you. This method of archiving folders can not be topped for ease of use.

Bitser comes with an interface that is divided into two areas. One is displaying the contents of the compressed files with the other is displaying the directory structure. This makes it much easier to add files to an compressed archive without having to drag and drop contents from the Windows operating system into the application. Like most file compression programs Bitser supports a wide variety of file compression formats including the popular zip, rar and 7z formats.

The output formats are limited to zip, 7z or exe though. Bitser comes with the standard functionality of all file compression programs like password protecting archives, drag and drop support and the integration into the operating system.

The interesting aspect of the program is the Explorer like interface. It can be used to browse many archives in relatively short time. The local file browser makes it possible to browse the computer system and inspect any compressed archives in no time. Another interesting option is the extensive reporting section which contains reports of previous operations. Reports contain information about files, sizes, dates, the compression algorithms, commands and results that can be saved in rft format for further analysis or archiving.

Bitser is a valid alternative for users who regularly work with compressed files in the Windows operating system. The interface makes it a tad easier to work with those files which puts it ahead of most other file compression programs. It does require the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 and will run on Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

If you are just looking for a file compression software that can extract archive contents you might be better off with a tool like 7-zip or the Universal Extractor.

It still looks like a normal 42 Kilobyte archive after the download but the surprise begins when the user tries to unpack that file. What they did was basically pack a 4.3 Gigabyte file consisting only of zeros. That packed file was replicated 16 times and packed again, and again, and again, and again. Or, to use their own words:

The file contains 16 zipped files, which again contains 16 zipped files, which again contains 16 zipped files, which again contains 16 zipped, which again contains 16 zipped files, which contain 1 file, with the size of 4.3GB.

You could basically unpack the 42 Kilobyte file into 4.5 Petabyte of uncompressed data if your hard drive storage space would be enough to do that.