LRGEX Compress is built around Zstandard (zstd) — a modern compression algorithm optimized for speed. It uses all your CPU cores automatically, so big folders finish in seconds instead of minutes.
For everyday backups and file sharing, seconds matter more than a slightly smaller archive.
No app to open. No drag-and-drop. No compression levels to choose — LRGEX Compress always uses optimized defaults.
- Right-click any file or folder
- Click LRGEX → Compress
- A progress window shows live speed and ETA
- Done —
.zgxarchive appears next to your files
Right-click any .zgx, .zip, .rar, or .7z → LRGEX → Extract or Extract Here.
Extracts ZIP, RAR, 7z, and ZGX archives. You don't need WinRAR or 7-Zip installed.
- ✓ Zstandard compression — uses all CPU cores automatically
- ✓ Windows Explorer integration — right-click any file or folder
- ✓ Progress window with live speed and ETA
- ✓ Atomic archive creation — interrupted compress never leaves a broken file
- ✓ Split Compress — break large archives into parts (
.partNNN.zgx) - ✓ ZIP extraction
- ✓ RAR extraction
- ✓ 7z extraction (single + multi-volume)
- ✓ Empty folder preservation
- ✓ Overwrite confirmation before replacing existing files
- ✓ Instant cancel (compress + extract, all formats)
- ✓ Encrypted archive support — password prompt for RAR, 7z, and ZIP (CLI:
-p <password>) - ✓ Integrity checksum —
.zgxarchives verified on extract via XXHash64 - ✓ Clean archive names (
video.mp4→video.zgx) - ✓ Ed25519 cryptographically signed auto-updates
- ✓ GPL-3.0-or-later License
- ✓ No administrator required
- ✓ Command-line support
- Speed first. Built on Zstandard, optimized for raw speed over slightly smaller archives. Big folders finish in seconds.
- Atomic writes. If your PC crashes or loses power mid-compress, you never get a broken half-written archive. The file only appears when it's 100% complete.
- Empty folders preserved. Some archivers drop empty directories silently. LRGEX Compress keeps your exact folder structure.
- Metadata preserved exactly. File contents, modification/creation timestamps (whole-second precision), Windows attributes (hidden, read-only, system), and symbolic links all round-trip identically. NTFS alternate data streams are not supported (rarely used; not planned).
- Instant cancel. Click Cancel during compress OR extract — it stops immediately (even mid-file for RAR/7z) and cleans up. No orphaned files, no waiting.
- Resilient extraction. If one file is locked or unreadable, extraction continues and the file is listed in a skipped-files report — not a total failure.
- Signed auto-updates. Every update is cryptographically verified using Ed25519 before installation.
- Per-user install. No admin prompt. No UAC. Works on locked-down corporate machines.
Reproducible compression benchmark: LRGEX Compress vs 7-Zip, WinRAR, and Windows ZIP. Fastest legitimate compression preset for each competitor; zero configuration for LRGEX.
5 datasets · 4 compressors · 5 runs each · 100 total runs · 0 integrity failures
| Dataset | LRGEX | 7-Zip | WinRAR | Windows ZIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Large files (3.6 GB) | 497 | 135 | 83 | 33 |
| Mixed content (1.4 GB) | 314 | 130 | 90 | 32 |
| Already compressed (1 GB) | 257 | 122 | 81 | 32 |
| Highly compressible (270 MB) | 100 | 275 | 133 | 68 |
| Many small files (10K) | 19 | 38 | 7 | 0.4 |
Overall throughput is the mean of all 25 runs per application, calculated from the underlying benchmark results rather than the rounded dataset medians shown above.
LRGEX is 1.7× faster than 7-Zip overall — fastest in 3 of 5 real-world categories.
These results measure compression throughput, not compression ratio or extraction performance; no single metric represents every use case.
Compression ratio = original dataset size ÷ archive size. Higher is better.
- 7-Zip wins on highly compressible data (275 vs 100 MB/s) and many-small-files (38 vs 19 MB/s)
- 7-Zip extracts faster (1.6×–6.9× depending on dataset) — but LRGEX extraction is slower by design: every file is written to a temporary name first, then atomically renamed to its final name only after the write completes. A failed write (disk full, I/O error, cancel mid-file) never destroys the user's existing file. That temp-then-rename guarantee is what you're paying for in that gap.
- WinRAR achieves a better compression ratio on mixed content (1.163 vs 1.005), but takes ~3.5× longer to compress
Full methodology + per-dataset tables
- Each application/dataset combination ran 5 times; median published
- All apps used their fastest legitimate compression preset — no Store/copy mode
- LRGEX: zero configuration (as shipped) · 7-Zip:
-mx=1· WinRAR:-m1 -r· Windows ZIP:Compress-Archive Fastest - Integrity verified: file count + file size matched on extraction, 100/100 PASS
Benchmark performed on Windows using LRGEX Compress, 7-Zip, WinRAR and Windows ZIP. Five runs per configuration; median results shown. No store/no-compression mode. All archives were extracted and verified.
| Application | Mode | Archive Size | Comp Time (s) | Speed (MB/s) | Extract (s) | Ratio | Integrity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LRGEX | Zero configuration | 1040 MB | 4.04 | 257.2 | 3.07 | 1 | PASS |
| 7-Zip | Fastest | 1040.1 MB | 8.52 | 122 | 1.08 | 1 | PASS |
| WinRAR | Fastest | 1040 MB | 12.79 | 81.3 | 1.06 | 1 | PASS |
| Windows ZIP | Fastest | 1040.3 MB | 32.18 | 32.3 | 1.86 | 1 | PASS |
| Application | Mode | Archive Size | Comp Time (s) | Speed (MB/s) | Extract (s) | Ratio | Integrity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LRGEX | Zero configuration | 64.9 MB | 2.79 | 100.3 | 2.69 | 4.317 | PASS |
| 7-Zip | Fastest | 63.5 MB | 1.02 | 275.1 | 0.39 | 4.411 | PASS |
| WinRAR | Fastest | 64.1 MB | 2.11 | 132.6 | 0.95 | 4.368 | PASS |
| Windows ZIP | Fastest | 72.2 MB | 4.15 | 67.5 | 2.29 | 3.88 | PASS |
| Application | Mode | Archive Size | Comp Time (s) | Speed (MB/s) | Extract (s) | Ratio | Integrity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LRGEX | Zero configuration | 3672.1 MB | 7.38 | 497.4 | 5.48 | 1 | PASS |
| 7-Zip | Fastest | 3672.2 MB | 27.24 | 134.8 | 3.42 | 1 | PASS |
| WinRAR | Fastest | 3672 MB | 44.03 | 83.4 | 3.14 | 1 | PASS |
| Windows ZIP | Fastest | 3673.1 MB | 111.36 | 33 | 3.96 | 1 | PASS |
| Application | Mode | Archive Size | Comp Time (s) | Speed (MB/s) | Extract (s) | Ratio | Integrity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LRGEX | Zero configuration | 54.3 MB | 2.79 | 19.4 | 14.34 | 0.994 | PASS |
| 7-Zip | Fastest | 54.1 MB | 1.41 | 38.4 | 7.48 | 0.998 | PASS |
| WinRAR | Fastest | 55.2 MB | 7.87 | 6.9 | 17.32 | 0.979 | PASS |
| Windows ZIP | Fastest | 55.5 MB | 153.86 | 0.4 | 127.86 | 0.974 | PASS |
| Application | Mode | Archive Size | Comp Time (s) | Speed (MB/s) | Extract (s) | Ratio | Integrity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LRGEX | Zero configuration | 1390.5 MB | 4.46 | 313.8 | 3.68 | 1.005 | PASS |
| 7-Zip | Fastest | 1391 MB | 10.75 | 130 | 1.43 | 1.005 | PASS |
| WinRAR | Fastest | 1202.4 MB | 15.56 | 89.9 | 1.46 | 1.163 | PASS |
| Windows ZIP | Fastest | 1392.6 MB | 44.44 | 31.5 | 3.22 | 1.004 | PASS |
- Download the latest
LRGEX-Compress-setup.exefrom Releases - Double-click — installs with no admin prompt
- Right-click any file or folder → LRGEX → Compress
Or install via Chocolatey:
choco install lrgex-compress
Or winget (pending):
winget install LRGEX.Compress
lrgex-compress <folder-or-file> # compress -> <name>.zgx
lrgex-compress --split [--size <MB>] <folder> # split compress -> .partNNN.zgx
lrgex-compress -x <archive> # extract -> <name>\ folder
lrgex-compress -x -h <archive> # extract here (into the archive's folder)
lrgex-compress --help # show usage- Windows 10/11
- ~20 MB free disk space
MSVCP140.dll missing? Older versions (≤1.4.1) required the Visual C++ runtime. Install it from Microsoft: https://aka.ms/vc14/vc_redist.x64.exe (Version 1.4.4+ uses a static CRT — no runtime needed.)
A .zgx file is a tar.zst archive (tar stream compressed with zstd) with a small
LRGEX header for identification.
Current format (v3):
bytes 0-4 : ASCII "LRGEX" (magic header)
byte 5 : format version (0x03)
bytes 6-13 : uncompressed total size (u64 little-endian, for progress accuracy)
bytes 14-21 : path index length (u64 little-endian)
bytes 22..22+len : zstd-compressed path index (file listing — enables instant
conflict detection without decompressing the archive)
bytes 22+len+ : zstd-compressed tar stream
The path index lets the extractor list archive contents instantly, even on multi-GB archives. This is why the extract window appears immediately with overwrite detection.
v1 format:
bytes 0-4 : ASCII "LRGEX" (magic header)
byte 5 : format version (0x01)
bytes 6-13 : uncompressed total size (u64 little-endian, for progress accuracy)
bytes 14+ : zstd-compressed tar stream
Version 0x02 is reserved for split archives (.partNNN.zgx).
Legacy format (pre-v1.4.1):
bytes 0-7 : uncompressed total size (u64 little-endian)
bytes 8+ : zstd-compressed tar stream
The extractor detects all formats automatically. Legacy and v1 archives continue to extract without any conversion.
This project vendors one crate with a patch:
| Crate | Version | Patch | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
vendor/libz-ng-sys |
1.1.29 | CMake static CRT defines (/MT + NDEBUG) | Self-contained exe (no VC++ redist needed) |
RAR extraction uses unrar-rs 0.4.0 (pure Rust, no vendored C).
Note: unrar-rs is licensed GPL-3.0-or-later with the UnRAR source-code restriction.
Review compatibility with your distribution model.
The previous vendored C unrar crate (0.5.8 with UCM_PROCESSDATA patch) was fully removed.
GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.
RAR extraction: unrar-rs — GPL-3.0-or-later + UnRAR restriction.
UnRAR source code may be used in any software to handle RAR archives without limitations free of charge, but cannot be used to develop RAR (WinRAR) compatible archiver and to re-create RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary. Distribution of modified UnRAR source code in separate form or as a part of other software is permitted, provided that full text of this paragraph, starting from "UnRAR source code" words, is included in license, or in documentation if license is not available, and in source code comments of resulting package.
UI built with Slint (Slint Royalty-free License). Third-party crates under their respective licenses (Apache-2.0 / BSD-3 / GPL-3.0).