7-Zip 21.00 Alpha/ 7-Zip 19.00 – File Archiver

7-Zip is an open source file archiver with the high compression ratio predominantly for the Microsoft Windows operating system.
It operates either as a command line program or with a graphical user interface. It also features integration with the Windows shell environment.
Compression ratio results are very dependent upon the data used for the tests. Usually, 7-Zip compresses to 7z format 30-70% better than to zip format. And it compresses to zip format 2-10% better than most of other zip compatible programs.
7-Zip is free software, developed by Igor Pavlov and distributed under the GNU LGPL license. This file archiver works on all Windows operating systems, from Windows NT to 10 (32-bit and 64-bit).
The main features of 7-Zip:
- High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression and LZMA2 compression
- For ZIP and GZIP formats, the provided compression ratio is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
- Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
- Self-extracting capability for 7z format
- Integration with Windows Shell
- Powerful File Manager
- Powerful command line version
- Plugin for FAR Manager
- Localizations for 87 languages
- Supported formats:
- Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM
- Unpacking only: AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR and Z.
Changes in 7-Zip 21.00 Alpha (2021-01-19):
- Some internal changes in code.
- Some bugs were fixed.
- New localizations: Tajik, Uzbek (Cyrillic)
Changes in 7-Zip 20.02 Alpha (2020-08-08):
- The default number of LZMA2 chunks per solid block in 7z archive was increased to 64.
It allows to increase the compression speed for big 7z archives, if there is a big number
of CPU cores and threads. - The speed of PPMd compressing/decompressing was increased for 7z/ZIP/RAR archives.
- The new -ssp switch. If the switch -ssp is specified, 7-Zip doesn’t allow the system
to modify “Last Access Time” property of source files for archiving and hashing operations. - Some bugs were fixed.
- New localization: Swahili.
Changes in 7-Zip 20.00 Alpha (2020-02-07):
- 7-Zip now supports new optional match finders for LZMA/LZMA2 compression: bt5 and hc5,
that can work faster than bt4 and hc4 match finders for the data with big redundancy. - The compression ratio was improved for Fast and Fastest compression levels with the
following default settings:- Fastest level (-mx1) : hc5 match finder with 256 KB dictionary.
- Fast level (-mx3) : hc5 match finder with 4 MB dictionary.
- Minor speed optimizations in multithreaded LZMA/LZMA2 compression for Normal/Maximum/Ultra
compression levels. - bzip2 decoding code was updated to support bzip2 archives, created by lbzip2 program.
- Some bugs were fixed.
- New localization: Turkmen.
Changes in 7-Zip 19.02 Alpha (2019-09-05):
- 7-Zip now can unpack files encoded with Base64 encoding (b64 filename extension).
- 7-Zip now can use new x86/x64 hardware instructions for SHA-1 and SHA-256, supported by AMD Ryzen and latest Intel CPUs: Ice Lake and Goldmont. It increases
- the speed of SHA-1/SHA-256 hash value calculation,
- the speed of encryption/decryption in zip AES,
- the speed of key derivation for encryption/decryption in 7z/zip/rar archives.
- The speed of zip AES encryption and 7z/zip/rar AES decryption was increased with the following improvements:
- 7-Zip now can use new x86/x64 VAES (AVX Vector AES) instructions, supported by Intel Ice Lake CPU.
- The existing code of x86/x64 AES-NI was improved also.
- There is 2% speed optimization in 7-Zip benchmark’s decompression.
- Some bugs were fixed.
Changes in 7-Zip 19.00 (2019-02-22):
- Encryption strength for 7z archives was increased: the size of random initialization vector was increased from 64-bit to 128-bit, and the pseudo-random number generator was improved.
- Some bugs were fixed.
Homepage – https://www.7-zip.org
Supported Operating Systems:
- Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (32-bit, 64-bit).
- Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2012, 2016.
Size: 1.16 MB
soundping
"Verified" 7-Zip can extract RAR5 in Beta 15.06
soundping
From the developer Igor Pavlov: "Some modules from "Extra" package were moved to LZMA SDK. 7-Zip 9.35 beta for 99.99% is same code as 9.34 alpha. Only some bugs were fixed. My latest changes in code for 7-Zip are under development still, so they are not included to 7-Zip 9.35 beta. So now I have two branches of code: 9.35 and "next_version" code. It's more difficult to support two branches. But at least now I can fix simple bugs faster and release fixed versions." Looks like faster beta roll outs are coming.
soundping
Still having ISO issues and no RAR5 support.
soundping
Wow, 9.31 Alpha just locked up explorer testing a file.. Win7 64bit.
andy2004
try 7zip sfx maker (freeware) Thanks for the update.
soundping
7Zip does have a self extracting function. Use Add to Archive and in Options box you'll see 'Create SFX archive' check box.
andy2004
Thanks for the update