Let us compare and decide the best File Compression Tool available on the web. There are Free as well as Paid softwares available for zipping files.

Everyone needs to send files to friends and the file size matters:

-Bigger files take more time to upload.

-If you are using free online storage like Google Drive or Drop box then max file size supported is approximately 300 MB per file.

-Bigger files take lot more space to store.

-Mail exchange servers also have restrictions on file size.

 

I am looking for following in a tool which can compress or zip the file:

-It should compress the max (though quality of decompress should not get affected).

-It should be supported on my Windows Platform.

-It should be Free (if possible).

-Easy to use.

-Should work with all types of files (Text, Doc, PDF, Images).

 

I think the following 3 main file compressing tools are really good, but which one is best:

  1. WinRAR
  2. Zip
  3. 7-Zip

Let’s see how they perform on the criteria set above-

Zip:

This is archive file format which supports lossless data compression. That means when the file decompressed, it will reconstruct exact original data. It is Free because every Windows OS provides it as built in feature (Compressed Folders). It is easy to use. Just right click on File/Folder and Compress it. A file with *.ZIP format is created. Click the link for more detail about ZIP.

 

WinRAR:

This is data compression utility. It is freely available for use. It is supported on all Windows platforms. Just right click on file and compress the file in RAR format. More details about WinRAR.

 

7-Zip:

This is open source file archiver. It is used to compress files.  It can read and write several formats. It is supported on all Windows platforms. More details can be found at 7-Zip.

 

Now the most important comparison point is how much these compression tools compress the different types of files. As a user I am not bothered about what algorithm it uses. I need the zipped file of good quality. I ran a test on different types of files like Doc, PDF, Text, PPT, Excel, JPEG, BMP and MP3.

Here are the results. Clearly 7-Zip seems to be the best compressing software. Especially for Doc, Text and Excel formats it compresses the most. I would recommend to use 7-Zip as your file compression tool.


File Compression Tools test and results:




Note: These are three tools I have picked up from 8-10 different softwares which I have tried. May be there is still better option available which I am not aware of. It would be great if you could suggest one.