Powerful experimental archiver with a high compression ratio, which includes a set of the best and most effective programs for data compression: FreeArc, PRECOMP, SREP, ZPAQ, LPAQ8, FP8, PAQ8PX, MCM, Kanzi, Razor, Durilca, Nanozip. The main goal of the program is to provide maximum compression, but at the same time maintain a fairly fast archive unpacking speed, so as not to wait long if you urgently need to get files. To do this, Ultra F-A archiver goes through the most suitable algorithms depending on the size of the input data and selects the best of them. Then it packs everything into an «.arc» container.
Run only 1 active instance of the program!
How does it work? Ultra F-A archiver repacks your archives using all possible compression algorithms, trying (sorting) different algorithms for each file type (there is a selection by file extension). At the end, it creates the smallest possible archive size (i.e. it optimizes the original archive, the content does not change!). This is why it is quite a long process (several times longer than simply creating an archive), but it will not affect the speed of unpacking the archive, it will still be very fast (unlike other superarchivers like PAQ, where you have to wait for hours to unpack, here it takes only a few seconds or even less). The compression gain can be up to 10-20% for certain types of files! If the optimized archive is the same size as the original one or larger, the program will leave the original archive unchanged, i.e. you will not lose anything in size in any case.
Thus, the program can also be used as a regular Converter from various types of archives (7z, zip, rar, etc.) to ARC archives.
For daily use, I recommend the «Good» mode, it is fast enough and gives good results. For better compression, use the «Best» or «Ultra» modes. The «Extreme» and «Extreme2» modes can be selected if the archive size is small enough (up to 10-50 MB), or if you want to get maximum compression despite a fairly long repacking process. If you have more than 4 GB of RAM, you can increase the size of the LZMA dictionary to 256 MB and PPMD to 1024 MB, which can further improve compression. Also, a small improvement usually gives an increase of the parameter «LZMA word Size» to 273.
Features: — Auto switch LZMA/PPMD/GRZIP/EXE/DISPACK/DELTA/DICT/LZP/REP/TTA during creation ARC-archives (+ improved (tuned) lzma for jpg, bmp, wav, exe…) — Full compatible with original ARC format. — High compression ratio — better than non tuned FreeArc original. — Supported formats: ARC, 7z, ZIP, ZIPX, CAB, RAR, ARJ, LZH, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, CHM, ISO, NSIS, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB (formats supported by 7-zip/FreeArc). — External compressors: PRECOMP, SREP, ZPAQ, LPAQ8, FP8, PAQ8PX, MCM, Kanzi, Razor, Durilca, Nanozip.
You can download original FreeArc installer or portable (zip). Also you can use Peazip Archiver for compress/extract ARC files.
FreeArc is an archiver featuring: * best speed and compression ratio among all practical archivers * dedicated algorithms for multimedia, executable and text compression * compression dictionaries up to 2gb * solid archives with smart updating * AES+Twofish+Serpent encryption * recovery record * self-extracting archives * extraction of zip, rar, 7z, gz, bz2, cab and many other archive formats * integration with Explorer, Total Commander, FAR manager and InnoSetup * GUI and console versions both for Windows and Linux * free for commercial and non-commercial use
Program optimizes your file to new one with «_optimized» name ending (source file will remain intact).
Current archive has its own status in the list: «running», «done» and «saved space». Full stats: 1. Number of optimized files (total and current session). 2. Files in the queue (quantity). 3. Saved disk space (Mb) total and for each archive in the list.
