Why Zip Is a Better Archive Format than 7z

Scott Hanselmann declared 7z to be a much better format than zip and zip to be dying.
Or at least, this is how I understand his writing:

The 7z format is fast becoming the compression format that choosey hardcore users choose.

Though I’ve got a lot of respect for Scott, I have to add some facts.

Zip is Much Faster Than 7z

zip-7z-comparison.1 In my humble opinion, Scott has overseen that zip is much faster than 7z… I’ve done  tests with both formats and with both formats I’ve used compression methods 1 and 5. Some of the results are staggering.

 

Discussion of the Results

compressFullzip-7z-comparison.3

In the compressFull tests, a data set is compressed and added to a new archive.  As you can see above, compressing with zip-1 is around 4 times faster than compressing with 7z-1 and seven times faster than compressing with 7z-5. The resulting archive is only 6% bigger than the 7z-1 archive and 40% bigger than the 7z-5 archive. In my opinion, the much greater speed speaks clearly for zip.

extractFull

In the extractFull tests, all the files in the archive created by fullCompress are extracted locally. Here, the speeds are not too different, e.g. extracting from a zip-1 is only around 30% faster than from a 7z-5 archive. As the 7z archives are smaller, I rate this as a draw.

extractSome

zip-7z-comparison.2

In the extractSome tests, only a small number of all the files are extracted from the archive. Extracting from a zip-1 archive is 50% faster than from a 7z-1 archive and an astonishing twenty times faster than from a 7z-5 archive. As this is unbelievable, I have repeated the tests a lot of times. But it stays true. Victory by knockout for zip.

Test Details

  • I’ve done the tests on my oldish Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook S with a Dual Core Processor, running Win 7.
  • For both archive formats I’ve used the commandline version of 7-zip 9.20, controlled by tclkitsh.exe and the tcl script given below. It is the current and stable release of 7-zip. Unchanged since 2010.
  • The compression method 5 is in 7-zip the default value for both formats. Compression method 1 is the fastest compression method for both formats.
  • I’ve repeated each test several times. The standard deviation of the results have mostly been very small.
  • My data set has been a set of 2800 files with 192 MB uncompressed.
  • The files which are extracted in the extractSome test are 72 files with 68 kB uncompressed.

Reproduction of the Tests

You can reproduce the tests easily:

  1. Download my script zip-test.zip and tclkitsh.zip and extract both into the same directory.
  2. Open the file zip-test.tcl with a text editor and adapt the first three lines. In the first line, adapt the path to the 7z.exe file on your PC. In the second line, adapt the path to the directory you want to compress.
  3. Open a command window, cd to the directory where you’ve put zip-test.tcl and type in     tclkitsh zip-test.tcl
  4. Wait and don’t use the computer until the tests are finished.
  5. The results will be written on screen and at the same time appended to the file zip-test-results.txt.
  6. You should discard the first test, because for the first one, the speed is highly determined by the time you need to read data from the hard drive. In later runs, much of the data is in the OS’s drive buffer. So the first test is not comparable to the following ones. It does not measure compression speed, but hard drive speed. You’ll see that the first run (with zip-1) takes much longer than the following ones, even those with zip-5 or 7z-5.

Summary

  1. All operations on zip archives are much faster or as fast as the same operation on 7z archives.
  2. 7z archives are somewhat smaller than zip archives – but not much.
  3. My recommendation is:
    Use zip as archive type. If you are using the software 7-zip, do not use the default settings. Always use compressing method 1.

What is your opinion? I’d love to hear from you.

Double Commander: Add 7-zip Support

I’ve sung a hymn on Double Commander in a previous post.

And after having used Double Commander some weeks, I got a bit annoyed by the fact that it didn’t handle 7z archives like zip archives. How to add 7-zip support to Double Commander 0.5.8 will be explained here.

Double Commander supports Total Commander plugins. There are several 7-zip plugins for Total Commander available from the net. Which is a problem, because only the last one you’ll try will work 😉

Do not use version 1.0.1.0 of 2005 of the 7-zip plugin by Alexander Cherenkov. This won’t work well, at least not with any of the four or so 7-zip versions I’ve tested. It will cause hangs and other malfunctions.

I’ve also come across a 7-zip plugin that has been marked as malware by VirusTotal. But you are careful in respect to what you download from the internet, isn’t it?

I now use version 0.7.6.5.a of 2011 by Adam Strzelecki and others. This has a fitting 7-zip version built into itself. It does not work perfectly, but quite well. I’ve removed some stuff that’s unneeded for Double Commander and repacked it to create wcx_7zip0.7.6.5b.bin.zip. You can download wcx_7zip0.7.6.5b.bin.zip here.

DC-Options

Installing it is no problem:

  1. Crete a directory $DC/plugins/wcx/7z, where $DC is the root installation folder of Double Commander.
  2. Extract 7zip.wcx or 7zip.wcx64 and 7zip.ini from the package wcx_7zip_0.7.6.5b.bin_.zip into the directory $DC/plugins/wcx/7z. You don’t need the other files in the package.
  3. In Double Commander, open the Options dialog and select  Plugins in the tree at the left and then the Packer Plugins tab.
  4. Press Add and select $DC/plugins/wcx/7z/7zip.wcx.
  5. Connect it with the file extension 7z.
  6. See image above for the result in the Packer Plugins tab.

How to Add Jar Extension to Zip Packer Plugin

Just because it fits here somehow and doesn’t deserve an own post:

  1. In Double Commander, open the Options dialog and select Plugins in the tree at the left and then the Packer Plugins tab.
  2. Select the line with the name zip.
  3. Press the Tweak button at the bottom of the page.
  4. In the upcoming dialog, press the Add new… button.
  5. In the following message box, type in jar and press Ok
  6. Close the dialog and press Apply on the Options dialog.