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.

The 7-Zip Theme Manager can then be used to change the interface of the program itself as well as the icons in Windows Explorer. Each 7-Zip theme comes with a preview image of how the interface would look like if it would be applied to 7-Zip. Between 30-40 different themes are available ranging from graphically stunning themes like Vista Inspirat to playful themes like Star Wars or Futurama.

A click on the Activate Theme button will activate that theme. It is important that 7-Zip is closed during the procedure to avoid complications. 7-Zip will automatically use the activated theme from then on. More than 10 different filetype icons are available as well in the theme manager that can replace the original 7-Zip icons in Windows Explorer. The name of the theme or icon, the creator, license and website are listed below the theme preview window.

7-Zip Default:

7-Zip Vista Inspirat Theme:

The default 7-Zip theme and icons can be activated in the 7-Zip Theme Manager as well to undo the changes. The theme manager contains one additional button that will look for a new 7-Zip and theme version on the Internet.

NTFS data compression has another advantage over popular file compression utilities. Since it is implemented in the file system the data compression is performed transparently. The filenames of compressed files stay the same and applications can access them as usual.

There are a few limitations though. One of the most important ones is that it is not possible to move compressed files to another file system. This means that it is not possible to move a compressed file from a NTFS file system to a Fat32 system.

AutoCompress is a lightweight portable data compression software that runs on all Windows NT based operating systems that make use of the NTFS file system. This includes Windows XP and Windows Vista. The tool can automatically compress and uncompress data in a specific directory. It does so by analyzing all files in a selected directory: age, size and data compression ratio.

The default values for compression are a file age of at least 28 days, a minimum size of 8192 bytes and a data compression ratio of at least 50%.

These values can be changed by the user. Similar values exist for uncompressing files of a selected directory.

AutoCompress is a sweet 13 Kilobyte data compression software. It could use some tinkering like implementing a browser to pick the directory to be analyzed or a better help file but those are minor issues. If you are looking for a good NTFS data compression software you might want to give AutoCompress a try.

Three parameters can be defined to determine if a file should be compressed or uncompressed.