Archiving is the process of preparing files that, in a compressed but ordered form, contain computer information - data, documents, codes of control programs, etc. This operation is carried out either by specialized archiving programs, or by means of the operating system itself. In addition, many applications have built-in archiving functionality for their own auxiliary files and databases.
The operating system of the computer is configured by default to periodically create backup copies of the most important files in order to have insurance against its own failure or the manifestation of any serious defect in the work of the computer hardware - for example, one of the hard drives. Such a backup can be configured as it is convenient for you - for this in the latest versions of Windows there is a component called "Backup and Restore Center". With its help, you can set the frequency of archiving, select files, copies of which are really worth keeping, specify how long the oldest archives should be kept, and set other parameters. The procedure itself, as a rule, takes from several minutes to an hour, but it occurs in the "background", that is, on the computer all this time you can continue to work with other applications.
Archiving, which is carried out using specialized programs (for example, WinZIP, WinRAR, 7-ZIP), is often used for other purposes. If the result of the above actions of the operating system is to create backup copies of files in case of emergency recovery, then these archivers are designed to prepare files for transferring them over computer networks or transporting them on removable media. For example, when sending attachments by e-mail, they are first uploaded to the sender's mail server, then transferred to the recipient's server, and then downloaded to the recipient's computer. Each of these stages occurs the faster, the smaller the size of the transferred files, and the time or volume of two of them (the first and the last) are also paid from the pockets of the recipient and the sender. Therefore, both the recipient and the sender, and the mail service are interested in reducing the volume of transferred files, which is what archiving programs are intended for.
