File Archiver Facts

You should know several things about File Archivers to make an educated choice for your needs. A file archiver is a program on your computer that will combine files or a series of archive files for easier storage or transportation from on computer to another or one location to another without damaging the original files. There are archive formats that reduce the size of the archive to provide lossless data compression, which is the best way to transfer a large amount of individual files over the Internet.

Originally, file archive programs were for backup of your files, mobility from location to location or network to network and archiving your files. Improvements to the File Archivers will now compress your files for more space on your hard drive. It will make sure the files are sequential on the hard drive instead of wherever there is empty space. A basic archiver will place the files sequentially into the archive. It will contain information such as the names and the lengths of the original files for reconstruction purposes. They also store information such as timestamps, the operating system, ownership and access control, which are the metadata. Archiving or packing identifies the process of file archiving. Unpacking, unarchiving or extracting refers to the reconstruction of the files from the archive.

Archive formats are the file format method used by the file archiver. There are several types of archive formats, archiving only, compression only, multi-function, software packaging and disk image. Archiving only will concatenate the files. This is like putting the words snow and ball together to make the word snowball. Compression only compresses files. Multi-function can concatenate, compress, encrypt, has recovery information, repack the archive into self-extracting and expanding files and create error detection. Software Packaging creates software packages that can be self-installing files.
Disk Image will create disk images of mass storage volumes and it can make optical disk images.

If you use Windows Operating System, you are probably familiar with .zip, .rar and .cab files. The Windows Installer is itself a file archiver for the distribution of software. Apple Macintosh computers use StuffIt. MAC OS X supports .Zip files. For years after first introduced, WinZip was the way to go because they offered their basic program to users free. After it became popular and users came to rely on it to extract zipped files, they put a 45-day trial period on it. Now if you want to use WinZip you must pay. No matter what file archiver you choose to have on your computer, once you download it, all archived files will use that program to extract your files unless you program your computer otherwise.

Whatever File Archiver you choose, make sure that it will perform the tasks that you require. There are many choices available, some free and others that you will pay for and for the upgrades and revisions. With so much data being held on our computers these days, a file archiver will protect your files and make them accessible for future use.