7-Zip rolls out 24.05 version with enhanced unpacking abilities and speed optimizations

7-Zip, a widely used cross-platform file archiver program, has rolled out its 24.05 version. The latest update introduces the ability to unpack ZSTD archives (with .zst filename extension), ZIP, SquashFS, and RPM archives using the ZSTD compression method. It also supports the fast hash algorithm XXH64, which is utilized in ZSTD.

The new 7-Zip version now has the capability to unpack RAR archives generated by the newly released WinRAR 7.00. It also supports unpacking of DMG archives using the XZ compression method, NTFS images with a cluster size exceeding 64 KB, and MBR and GDP images with 4 KB sectors.

7-Zip 24.05 has introduced speed optimizations for unpacking several archive formats, including rar, cab, wim, zip, and gz. Hash calculation speeds have also been optimized for CRC-32, CRC-64, and Blake2sp.

The 24.05 version has added a new RISCV filter for compressing to 7z and XZ archives. The decompression speed for LZMA and LZMA2 in the ARM64 version for Windows has been boosted by 20%-60%. The updated 7-Zip version also introduces numerous new switches, along with a range of enhancements and bug fixes.