How to Zip and Unzip Files with Peazip

Zip is a common compressed archive file format: an archive file is meant to combine multiple files together for easier management i.e. backup, sharing through mail or cloud or any other network service, etc. File compression basically uses statistical models to map the original data to a smaller output, which allows both to spare storage for backup and save upload and download bandwidth (and time) for sharing.

Over time, various archive file types emerged, introducing unique features to distinguish them from competitors, as stronger compression ratio, ability to split the output archive to met some constrains (i.e. mail attachment limit), error detection and correction, and encryption in order to enforce privacy if the file is stolen, or passed through public or third party controlled channels, i.e. mail server, or remote storage service. This brought users more choice and more features, but also the need for dedicated archive manager applications to fully use the potential of different file formats, either for creating own archives, and for extracting archives received or downloaded.