Archive formats by purpose

Archive formats are used for backups, mobility, and archiving. Many archive formats compress the data to consume less storage space and result in faster transfer times as the same data is represented by fewer bytes. Another benefit is that files are combined into one archive file which has less overhead for managing or transferring. Many compression algorithms are available to losslessly compress archived data; some algorithms are designed to work better (smaller archive or faster compression) with some data types. Archive formats are used by Unix-like and Windows operating systems to package software for easier distributing and installing than binary executables.

Archiving only

Compression only

Archiving and compression

Data recovery

Comparison

Containers and compression

Software packaging and distribution

Features

See also

• Archive file
• Comparison of file archivers
• Comparison of file systems
• List of file systems
• Solid compression
• zlib

Notes

References

1. File extensions may differ across platforms. The case of these extensions may differ on case-insensitive platforms. ↩

2. MIME media types may be conjectural. Very few have been officially registered with the IANA. Compression-only formats should often be denoted by the media type of the decompressed data, with a content coding indicating the compression format. /wiki/MIME ↩

3. Official names may be disputed. ↩

4. Creation platform indicates the platform(s) under which a format can be created. ↩

5. Mozilla ARchive https://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update:MAR ↩

6. "MarcoPon/SeqBox". May 13, 2024. Archived from the original on February 12, 2022. Retrieved March 20, 2019 – via GitHub. https://github.com/MarcoPon/SeqBox ↩

7. File extensions may differ across platforms. The case of these extensions may differ on case-insensitive platforms. ↩

8. MIME media types may be conjectural. Very few have been officially registered with the IANA. Compression-only formats should often be denoted by the media type of the decompressed data, with a content coding indicating the compression format. /wiki/MIME ↩

9. Official names may be disputed. ↩

10. Creation platform indicates the platform(s) under which a format can be created. ↩

11. If attaching .F to the file name is not possible with the DOS operating system, the second and third character of the filename extension are replaced by XF. ↩

12. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2022-02-01. Retrieved 2009-03-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/utils/compress/freeze-2.5.0.tar.gz ↩

13. "Genozip - A Universal Extensible Genomic Data Compressor". Archived from the original on 2022-12-26. Retrieved 2022-12-26. https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/37/16/2225/6135077 ↩

14. The 'application/zlib' and 'application/gzip' Media Types. doi:10.17487/RFC6713. RFC 6713. Retrieved 2016-05-03. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6713 ↩

15. File extensions may differ across platforms. The case of these extensions may differ on case-insensitive platforms. ↩

16. MIME media types may be conjectural. Very few have been officially registered with the IANA. Compression-only formats should often be denoted by the media type of the decompressed data, with a content coding indicating the compression format. /wiki/MIME ↩

17. Official names may be disputed. ↩

18. Creation platform indicates the platform(s) under which a format can be created. ↩

19. Restoration platform indicates the platform(s) under which a format can be restored/extracted. Most file formats can be understood by more than one platform. ↩

20. "Restorable with free software" indicates whether the format can be restored using an extraction tool that is free software. /wiki/Free_software ↩

21. "Overview". dev.b1.org. Archived from the original on 2023-04-04. Retrieved 2014-03-03. http://dev.b1.org/standard/archive-format.html ↩

22. "B6Zip - Extract .B6Z and .B6 files - Download". B6Zip. Archived from the original on 2024-05-23. Retrieved 2017-10-06. http://b6zip.com/ ↩

23. "Genozip | Compression for FASTQ, BAM, VCF". Genozip. Archived from the original on 2024-05-27. Retrieved 2021-07-22. https://genozip.com/ ↩

24. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2024-04-17. Retrieved 2009-03-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/utils/compress/ha0999p-linux.tar.gz ↩

25. "WinHKI". Archived from the original on 2006-12-05. https://web.archive.org/web/20061205050249/http://www.winhki.com/ ↩

26. "Tandem Unpak GUI". Archived from the original on 2020-09-22. Retrieved 2013-09-16. http://sybond.web.id/project/?p=8 ↩

27. "Data Compression Programs". mattmahoney.net. Archived from the original on 2024-05-28. Retrieved 2010-09-29. http://mattmahoney.net/dc ↩

28. RARLAB UnRAR is proprietary. The free unar has partial unpacking support for RAR1.3, RAR1.5, RAR2, RAR3 & RAR5 [13] and the free libarchive has partial unpacking support for RAR3[14] & RAR5[15]. /wiki/UnRAR ↩

29. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2018-03-20. Retrieved 2011-03-08.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) http://www.msoftware.biz/products/winrk ↩

30. "PerfectCompress". Archived from the original on 2012-07-23. Retrieved 2009-11-08. https://web.archive.org/web/20120723164918/http://moises-studios.110mb.com/perfectcompress ↩

31. DeepFreezer[circular reference] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepFreezer ↩

32. Zzip https://web.archive.org/web/20090201134403/http://debin.net/zzip/ ↩

33. File extensions may differ across platforms. The case of these extensions may differ on case-insensitive platforms. ↩

34. MIME media types may be conjectural. Very few have been officially registered with the IANA. Compression-only formats should often be denoted by the media type of the decompressed data, with a content coding indicating the compression format. /wiki/MIME ↩

35. Official names may be disputed. ↩

36. Creation platform indicates the platform(s) under which a format can be created. ↩

37. "darrenldl/blockyarchive". July 7, 2024. Archived from the original on May 1, 2019. Retrieved April 11, 2019 – via GitHub. https://github.com/darrenldl/blockyarchive ↩

38. "MarcoPon/SeqBox". May 13, 2024. Archived from the original on February 12, 2022. Retrieved March 20, 2019 – via GitHub. https://github.com/MarcoPon/SeqBox ↩

39. The DOS and Windows operating systems required filenames to include an extension (of at least one, and typically 3 characters) to identify the file type. Such extensions must be unique for each type of file. Many operating systems identify a file's type from its contents without the need for an extension in its name. However, the use of three-character extensions has been embraced as a useful and efficient shorthand for identifying file types. ↩

40. Archive files are often stored on magnetic or other media subject to storage errors. Many archive formats contain extra error detection or correction information which can be used by the software used to read the archive files to detect and possibly correct errors. ↩

41. Many archive formats contain redundant data embedded in the files in order to detect data storage or transmission errors, and the software used to read the archive files contains logic to detect and correct errors. ↩

42. Many archive formats include the capability to encrypt contents to prevent unauthorised access, using one of many available encryption methods. ↩

43. While the original tar format uses the ASCII character encoding, current implementations use the UTF-8 (Unicode) encoding, which is backwards compatible with ASCII. /wiki/Tar_(file_format) ↩

44. "7-Zip / Discussion / Open Discussion: File times: creation, access - precision". sourceforge.net. Archived from the original on 2021-07-25. Retrieved 2020-02-08. https://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/discussion/45797/thread/3964f1db/#cbcb/7556 ↩

45. Lemke, Marcel (1998). "Technical Information on the archiver ACE V1.2". hugi.scene.org. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 22 May 2023. http://www.hugi.scene.org/online/coding/hugi%2012%20-%20coace.htm ↩

46. Supports the external Parchive program (par2). ↩

47. "LICENCE · master · RiscOS / Sources / FileSys / ImageFS / SparkFS / Codecs / SparkSpark · GitLab". 28 January 2023. Retrieved 2023-03-26. https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/FileSys/ImageFS/SparkFS/Codecs/SparkSpark/-/blob/master/LICENCE ↩

48. The PAQ family (with its lighter weight derivative LPAQ) went through many revisions, each revision suggested its own extension. For example: ".paq9a". ↩

49. From 3.20 release RAR can store modification, creation and last access time with the precision up to 0.0000001 second (0.1 μs).[24][25] ↩

50. "Professional – Nico de Vries". Archived from the original on 2012-12-30. Retrieved 2020-02-08. http://www.nicodevries.com/nico/professional.php ↩

51. WIM can store the ciphertext of encrypted files on an NTFS volume, but such files can only by decrypted if an administrator extracts the file to an NTFS volume, and the decryption key is available (typically from the file's original owner on the same Windows installation). Microsoft has also distributed some download versions of the Windows operating system as encrypted WIM files, but via an external encryption process and not a feature of WIM. /wiki/Ciphertext ↩

52. Not to be confused with the archiver JAR written by Robert K. Jung, which produces ".j" files. /w/index.php?title=JAR_(software)&action=edit&redlink=1 ↩

53. "Arch Linux - News: Now using Zstandard instead of xz for package compression". archlinux.org. https://archlinux.org/news/now-using-zstandard-instead-of-xz-for-package-compression/ ↩

54. Compression is not a built-in feature of the formats, however, the resulting archive can be compressed with any algorithm of choice. Several implementations include functionality to do this automatically ↩

55. Compression is not a built-in feature of the formats, however, the resulting archive can be compressed with any algorithm of choice. Several implementations include functionality to do this automatically ↩

56. Compression is not a built-in feature of the formats, however, the resulting archive can be compressed with any algorithm of choice. Several implementations include functionality to do this automatically ↩

57. Per-file compression with gzip, bzip2, lzo, xz, lzma (as opposed to compressing the whole archive). An individual can choose not to compress already compressed filenames based on their suffix as well. /wiki/Gzip ↩

58. Compression is not a built-in feature of the formats, however, the resulting archive can be compressed with any algorithm of choice. Several implementations include functionality to do this automatically ↩

59. Most implementations can optionally produce a self-extracting executable ↩

60. Most implementations can optionally produce a self-extracting executable ↩

61. Most implementations can optionally produce a self-extracting executable ↩

62. Compression is not a built-in feature of the formats, however, the resulting archive can be compressed with any algorithm of choice. Several implementations include functionality to do this automatically ↩

63. Most implementations can optionally produce a self-extracting executable ↩