File compression and decompression tools are a smart way of storing or transferring files within size constraint. If you want to send a bunch of files through email at a time, then compressing those files into suitable format is the smartest way to do that. Even some file compression and decompression tools are able to extract ISO images. Compressed file format depends on the tools you are using. But the tool you are using should be able to extract compressed files of most of the well known formats. Here five popular file compression tools for Windows 7 are described below.
ALZip
ALZip is another file compression tool that can unzip 40 different archives. It can zip files into 8 different compressed formats such as ZIP, TAR, EGG and others. This file compressing software supports Unicode and can compress large-capacity files. Other features of AlZip are that, it supports powerful compressing methods and it is compatible in different platforms like Windows, MAC etc.
7Zip
This is also a free file compression tool that supports most of the standard file formats. The context menu options for 7Zip include a unique feature: Test Archive, which checks compressed files for any errors. 7Zip uses most advanced compression algorithm: LZMA. This is small yet powerful tool for file compression. Generally it compresses file into .7z format. The 7zip file manager helps you to compress (or decompress) by opening the application only.
PeaZip
Another free yet powerful file compression tool is PeaZip. Though it’s little bit slow in extraction of a compressed file in comparison with other tools available in the market, but certainly it has some extra features. The context menu is very easy to use. The main benefit is that, you can choose not to extract the common files, if you are extracting for the second time after some small modification. There are also other options like rename existing files, overwrite, ask before overwrite etc.
WinZip
WinZip is one of the most used file compression tools. Though it gives a 30 days trial version, but it’s better to buy the full version and that’s also price worthy. It is fast and very handy tool to use. The traditional file compression format of this software is .zip. The new version, .zipx gives more powerful compression technique. But when decompressing it, it supports all formats of compressed files, even ISO images can be extracted using this software.
WinRAR
This is one of the best free compression tools available over the internet. WinRAR is designed by RARLab. It associates all the compressed files with a book like icon. It uses standard LZ compression techniques like other tools and also compression (or decompression) choices appear in the context menu appropriately.
It is capable of extracting any compressed file of standard formats. If you want to go for a free file compression tool, then WinRAR is a good choice. After Installing WinRAR you will see several options are added in Desktop Context menu. Using these options you can directly compress or decompress files.