1.

What is Archiving?

Archiving (or compression) is a technology that enables files to be compressed by deleting duplicated information and replacing it with codes that are shorter in length. This reduces the file size so that it needs less space on disk. Archives also make it easy to group files, making transporting and copying files much faster. Archives usually have file extensions like ALZ, ZIP, LZH, or ARJ, depending on how they were created. The opposite of "to archive" (or "to compress") is "to extract" (or "to decompress").

There are two different ways to archive information in files: archiving without losing information and archiving that loses information. These are referred to as "lossless compression" and "lossy compression".

For information such as programs or text files, information loss is unacceptable, so lossless compression algorithms are used. ALZip uses only lossless compression.

Images or voice information, however, are usually compressed with lossy compression algorithms. The differences are usually so slight that you can't notice. The benefits are greatly reduced file sizes. For example, an uncompressed BMP or TIFF image can easily be reduced in size by about 90% by changing it into a JPEG or PNG, which are both compressed file formats.

2.

What is a Beta version?

There are three basic phases in software development: alpha, beta, and final release.

Alpha versions are not released outside of a software company. They are only used inside of a company for debugging and further development purposes. The alpha phase includes unit testing, component testing, and system testing.

The beta phase can be considered "pre-release testing". Beta versions of software are distributed to a wide audience partly to give the program a "real-world" test and partly to provide a preview of the next release. Beta testers are usually experienced users or other developers. Inexperienced users are generally discouraged from using beta software.

The last phase, the final release, is when a program is published in its final version.

The process of releasing programs like this is called Configuration Management.

3.

What are spanned archives?

Spanned archive refers to the method of dividing compressed files into multiple, smaller files.

Tip: For more information, refer to Spanned archives.

4.

What are the differences between hard disk and floppy disk spanned archives?

ALZip supports two spanned archives methods: spanning archives over floppy disks and spanning archive on hard disks.

1. Spanned archives with floppy disks

When spanning archives over floppy disks in ZIP format, each file is named identically and each disk is labeled in sequence. For example:

As all archives share the same file name, you cannot transfer them onto hard disk for extraction. Also, you cannot customize the volume size. To solve this problem, ALZip supports spanning archives on hard disks. See below.

2. Spanned archives on hard disks

With ALZip's spanned archive format, you can create multi-volume archives on hard disks. File extentions follow in sequence as illustrated below:

Many ZIP utilities don't support spanning archives onto hard disk. To extract ALZ spanned files you must use ALZip. If your friends use other utilities, you should make your ALZ files Self-Extractors.

Tip: This feature is extremely useful when sending large archives by email. Most email services limit the size of files that you can send, often as small as 1MB. Using ALZip spanned archives, however, lets you split files into small, manageable chunks that your email service provider will be more than happy to pass on. For more information about maximum email sizes, contact your ISP (Internet Services Provider).

5.

How do I use spanned archives?

ALZip only supports spanning archives to hard disks. (Supporting spanned archiving for floppy disks is simply redundant. In the long run, it is easier and faster to create the files on hard disk and then move them to floppy.) There are several ways to create files using spanned archives, but the most commonly used ways are as follows:

Spanning archives on hard disk in ALZ format

1. Right-click the file(s) you want to archive in Windows Explorer. 2. Select Add with ALZip from the context menu, then click the egg icon in the Save archive as dialog option. Use the pulldown menu to browse to where you want the new archive and type in a new file name. Click the Save button. You are then returned to the New archive dialog box.

3. Set a volume size for the spanned archive by selecting a default size from the pulldown menu or by typing in a custom size. Custom volume sizes should be at least 64KB. Remember to specify the units as KB (kilobytes) or MB (megabytes).

4. Make certain that the ALZ format is selected. If you wish, set a password.

5. Click the Add button to finish.

Warning: ALZ spanned archives cannot be extracted by other compression utilities, such as WinZip or versions of ALZip earlier than 4.x. If you are emailing ALZ files, you might want to turn them into Self-Extractors (SFX) first.

Tip: for more information, refer to Spanned archives.

6.

Can I change a spanned archive into a self-extracting format?

Yes, you can transform archive files into executable files with the ALZip Self-Extractor. Simply right-click on the first file in the spanned archive, the one with the .alz file extension, and then click ALZip Self-Extractor (EXE). Click OK and you're done. A new .exe file will be in the same directory. You can erase the original .alz file because it is no longer needed.

Tips: For more information, refer to Spanned archives or ALZip Self-Extractor.

7.

How do I extract a spanned archive?

There are two types of spanned archives, with hard disks and with floppy disks, and their extraction is almost identical to each other. Note that, with spanned archives on hard disks, you must have all the archive files under the same folder to extract all the files successfully.

1. Extracting spanned archives on hard disks (ALZ).

(1) Make sure that every volume of the spanned archive is in the same folder.

(2) Open the first volume in the archive as you normally would. It has an .alz file extension.

(3) Extract any or all files from the first archive file. The rest of the files are automatically extracted.

2. Extracting spanned archives from floppy disks (ZIP).

(1) Insert the first disk and browse to the first file in Windows Explorer.

(2) Extract files from the first archive disk as you would normally for any other archive. (If you check the properties of the first disk, it should be labeled PKBACK# 001.)

(3) You are provided a dialog message, not an error, to insert the last disk after processing the first one. This is to gather information on the spanned archive.

(4) Once again, the message to insert the first disk is provided.

(5) Now, you can extract the files by following the directions and switching disks.

Tip: For more information, refer to Spanned archives.

8.

Can I use ALZip to extract files from other archiving utilities and vice versa?

Of course! You can extract any of 27 different archive formats with ALZip. It doesn't matter which utility originally created the file.

As for other utilities extracting archives made with ALZip, that depends... As long as the archiving utility supports the file format of the archive that you made with ALZip, then yes. For example, you can't extract an ALZip ALZ file with gzip (a UNIX archiving utility), but you can extract ALZip TGZ archives with gzip. Likewise for WinZip, you can't extract BH (blakhole) files with WinZip.

Tip: For more information, refer to New archives.

9.

Can I extract a spanned archive made with WinZip from ALZip?

Yes. When you create ZIP floppy disk spanned archives, all archiving utilities, including WinZip, that support the ZIP file format can extract them. With ALZip ALZ hard disk spanned archives, however, you can only extract those files with ALZip. Currently no other utilities support ALZ compression.

WinZip supports spanned archives under the name Multple Disk Spanning or disk spanning. Specifying a path to an archive as A:\Filename.zip automatically spans archives with a fixed size (1,457,664 bytes). Every file receives the same name on every floppy disk, i.e. Filename.zip. However, each disk receives a different label as detailed above, i.e. PKBACK# 001, PKBACK# 002, etc.

As each spanned volume has the same name and must be extracted from floppy, downloading them on the net is seriously problematic at best. You cannot distinguish file sequences. Actually retrieving the archived files requires a significant amount of knowledge and work from users.

However, using ALZip Spanned archives helps you easily solve problem this problem. ALZip supports all the file formats WinZip does and also supports spanning archives directly on hard disks. You can select custom volume sizes with ALZip and can also easily distinguish file sequences by the extension. This makes transferring spanned archives on the net trivial.

Tip: For more information, refer to Spanned archives.

10.

How do I extract spanned archive files without the first file/disk?

For ZIP archives, you don't need to have the first disk, but you do need to have the last disk. A record of all the files in the archive is stored on the last disk in the ZIP archive, and without that record, you cannot access any of the files in the archive.

To extract files from a spanned ZIP archive, insert the last disk and open the archive file. Extract files as you would normally and follow the directions to insert other disks as needed. If you are asked for a disk that you do not have, you will not be able to extract files that are on that disk.

With the ALZ archive format, the record of which volume files are stored in resides in the first file, the ALZ file.

To extract files from an ALZ archive, open the first volume (the ALZ file) and extract files you normally would. If you are prompted for a file that you do not have, click Cancel. You will still be able to get to any files that reside in previous volumes.

Tip: For more information, refer to Spanning archives.

11.

How do I switch an archive to a self-extracting format?

In general, you must have an archiving utility to extract files from archives. However, what if your friends don't have a utility to extract the archive files that you send to them? The ALZip Self-Extractor solves that problem for you. ALZip can tranform archive files into an executable format with an EXE extension, eliminating the need for external utilities.

For example, you can archive and transform the file estsoft.txt to estsoft.exe as follows:

1. Create an archive file, estsoft.zip, from estsoft.txt.

2. Right-click the file, estsoft.zip, and choose ALZip Self-Extractor from your context menu.

3. The ALZip Self-Extractor dialog box prompts you to configure a few options. Click the OK button.

4. The executable file estsoft.exe is then created.

Tip: For more information, refer to ALZip Self-Extractor.

12.

Does ALZip support the RAR format?

Yes, but you can only extract RAR files due to patent issues. Eugene Roshal of RarSoft, the company that makes WinRAR, doesn't allow other utilities to create RAR archive files.

13.

I thought ALZip wasn't spyware, but my firewall alerted me that ALZip is accessing the Internet! What's going on?

ALTools automatically check for updates for you to make sure that you have the latest version with new features and fixes. It's possible that your firewall has blocked ALZip from accessing the ALTools update server and alerted you.

Please rest assured that there is no spyware in any ALTools, and we don't collect any personal information. We're glad that you've chosen to use ALZip and your trust is valuable to us, so we are not going to do anything to jeopardize that. If you have any concerns, please email us, or better yet, post your concerns in our online forums; we'd be more than happy to answer any concerns or questions you might have.

We recommend that you give permissions in your firewall for ALZip and other ALTools to access the Internet.

14.

Why do I have to type my password when first making an archive?

Password protecting files protects you against casual users who don't have the password and try to spy on the contents of your files.

As a security measure, passwords are only set by the person who first creates the archive, when they create the archive. Subsequent users, including the person who created the archive, cannot alter or change the password. Not even the ALZip developers at ESTsoft Corp. can access your passwords. So if you lose a password, don't call us because there isn't anything we can do about it. But you can try the ALZip password recovery tool.

Tip: For more information, refer to Passwords or Recoverying lost passwords.

15.

Can I extract only one file from a spanned archive?

Yes. You can extract individual files from ALZ spanned archives.

Extracting individual files from ZIP spanned archives is not allowed without the last disk.

Each spanned archive format is different, and so whether you can or not will vary.

Tip: For more information, refer to Spanned archives.

16.

How do I respond to a "Header Corrupt" message?

When a "Header corrupt" message appears, there may be a virus problem or other download problem. This is not a problem with ALZip or the ALZip Self-Extractor.

If you downloaded the archive, try downloading it again. If you downloaded it by ftp, remember to set your ftp client to binary mode, and not ASCII mode.

17.

What do I do with an "Insert the last disk" message?

There are two possible reasons: spanned archives or corrupted files. If they were spanned onto floppies, make sure you know the order of the floppies and put the last disk in. Otherwise, the archive may be corrupted. In this case click Cancel to extract as much as possible and hope for the best.

Tip: Way back in ancient computer history, floppy disks were very expensive (often $5 each or more), and floppy drives cost a small fortune, but they were better quality too. Today, floppy disks sell for less than the price of a pack of gum, so don't expect them to necessarily hold up to all the abuse that they are invariably going to be subjected to. Treat them well, and then don't trust them with anything important.