How often our guesses and expectations are broken about the realities of life! How could anyone think that, having first appeared in the distant 90s, archivers will survive to this day. And not just exist, but will continue to evolve and constantly improve. The most famous of them is the win rar archiver. There are also quite popular ones like 7-Zip, WinZip.
An archiver is a special program designed to reduce the volume (compression) of data. The reason for the appearance of such programs was the absence at that time of capacious hard drives and convenient portable storage media. The capacity of the floppy disks barely reached 2.88 MB, and each megabyte of disk space cost a quite tangible amount. By reducing the volume occupied by the data, it was possible to partially solve these problems. At the moment, when a 2-terabyte hard drive is not inaccessible for anyone, archivers are used for more convenient storage and transfer of packed data, and not because of the need.
The archiver, processing the information indicated to it, uses the latest algorithms, allowing it to be reduced by 81% (Excel file), which seems to be a pretty impressive result. Of course, the compression rate depends on the type of files being processed. For example, image files * jpg or music * mp3 are practically not compressed, since their formats themselves imply a decrease in volume during creation.
Users often ask how to archive the file and what benefits it will provide on a modern computer. The benefits include:
- direct data compression. It may be useful, if necessary, to attach an attachment file to the e-mail, while reducing its volume, and hence traffic. Even now, many have to use a relatively slow Internet connection with megabyte tariffing (this connection is via GPRS, EDGE, 3G);
- Sometimes mail programs block reception of executable files (* com and * exe). In this case, one way around this limitation is the ability to pack the file with an archiver;
- Almost all compression programs allow you to set a password on the created archive. For example, the winrar archive is “impossible to crack”, especially created by new versions of the program. For added security, information is just a godsend;
- the ability to split the archive into volumes (parts of one archive) of the selected size. A very useful function, for example, if necessary, write a large amount of information to CDs. Direct recording means using additional media, and less data is needed for compressed data. By copying the archives to the hard drive, you can subsequently easily restore the entire volume. In addition, the breakdown into volumes allows you to write a file larger than 4 GB to a medium with the FAT32 system.
So how to archive the file? Each archiver designed to work in the Windows system has a convenient graphical interface. By running it, you can adjust the compression settings, select a password and other parameters. After specifying the prepared folder or file, click "Add to Archive".
Any computer user can understand how to archive a file. After all, a correctly installed archiver creates a link to itself in the system menu (by clicking on the file with the right mouse button, you can see compression options in the menu that appears).
Finally, the third way that answers the question of how to archive a file is done through the command line. All compression programs support this feature. Beginners rarely use this method, but it helps experienced users to configure archive creation more flexibly.
There is nothing complicated in archiving files . The best way to learn is to choose an arbitrary file (just in case, save a copy of it) and try to reduce its size by the archiver program.