7z limitation or bug?

[virtualnik]

Hello,

I can not simply drop a file over an existing 7z archive in order to add the file as i can do it with other archive formats (eg: zip).

Is a fix for this planned or is this a limitation with this (new) 7z archive format?

Thanks.

[Jr heuwing]

7ZIP is a solid archive format just like CAB.

It’s an limitation of 7ZIP unfortunally.

[Serhiy]

This is a limitation of PowerArchiver…

7-ZIP supports both solid and non-solid archives.

but PA can’t determine whether archive is solid or not.

I hope the future PA releases will support updating 7-ZIPs

[spwolf]

@NTFS:

This is a limitation of PowerArchiver…

7-ZIP supports both solid and non-solid archives.

but PA can’t determine whether archive is solid or not.

I hope the future PA releases will support updating 7-ZIPs

It is both - on one side, PA can not detect non-solid archives, on the other side, most 7zips are solid anyway since there is an huge benefit to compression strenght.

regards,

[finalcut]

what are the advantage if creating a solid file compared to a non-solid one?

[Serhiy]

Solid archiving significantly increases compression, especially when adding a large number of small, similar files.

But it also has a few important disadvantages:

• slower updating of existing solid archives (you have to repack all the files);

• to extract a single file from a solid archive all preceding files must be analyzed. This makes extraction from the middle of a solid archive slower than extraction from a normal archive, but, if all files are to be extracted from a solid archive, the extraction speed will not be affected.

• if any file in a solid archive is damaged, it will be impossible to extract all files which follow the damaged area.