Now imagine that same process, only much quicker, and with digital files! 7-Zip uses its compression protocols and a lot of other fancy computing terms to turn files of all kinds into one neat, convenient package. Imagine you had a present to give someone, and you wanted to include their favorite things inside of a box, and you place everything you can in the box, tape it up, wrap it up, and send it along its way. If you're not sure what 7-Zip is, it's a program that allows for the 'archival' or packing of files through the magic of computing processes and the like. Still, it’s a solid compression format.7-Zip has become a renowned and celebrated name within the computing community, giving users the ability to package and extract files with supreme ease. Pretty much every system out there has a way to open ZIP files, and using 7Z files means people actually need to install 7-Zip or another third-party app that supports them to work with the files. The main reason for this is compatibility. They also support ridiculous file sizes-theoretically up to 16 billion GB!ħ-Zip is one of the more popular compression tools out there, but most people use it to open or create ZIP files rather than using the more proprietary 7Z files. RELATED: How to Password Protect Files and Folders With EncryptionħZ files make it easy to send and download files from the internet and help free up space on your hard drive with their high compression rate used when archiving. 7Z is similar to other archived formats, such as ZIP, TAR.GZ, RAR, and ISO, but uses a higher compression ratio, along with AES-256 encryption.

7Z is the file extension used for an archived file created using 7-Zip, a free, open-source file compression tool.

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