PeaZip is a tool used to compress and decompress files, to make them take up less space on your harddrive. There are meny techniques, or algorithms used to compress files, and PeaZip supports th emost common of them. PeaZip fully supports 7Z, 7Z-sfx, ARC/WRC, BZ2/TBZ2, GZ/TGZ, PAQ/LPAQ, PEA, QUAD, split, TAR, UPX and ZIP. I addition it opens/reads a whole bunch of other formats, including RAR and ISO.
In addition to the compressing and decompessing, you can use PeaZip to split files into smaller parts, and put them back together again. This is usefull if you want to move big files using a storage medium that is to small for the whole file. It also has a wipe function, that completely deletes the file. Usually when you delete a file, all the computer deletes is the reference to the address of the file on the harddrive. The actual data still remains intact until another file overwrites that data. But with PeaZip you can make sure that the data is properly deleted, and impossible to restore.
PeaZip is a free alternative to WinZip.
In addition to the standard version of PeaZip, where you have to install the software on your system, there has now been released a socalled Portable version for both Windows and Linux. This version does not need to be installed in order to run, the downloaded ZIP-file just needs to be unzipped to a folder, either on your computer or an external drive like for instance a USB memory stick, and can be run directly from there. This gives you less software installed on your system, which again gives you a faster system, and also lets you bring PeaZip with you when you are working on another computer. It also, of course, saves you some space on your harddrive.